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Thursday, December 09, 2004
Environment agency can't confirm logging on ancestral domains
By Ben O. Tesiorna
PELAGIO Nalla of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) forest management services said they recently received complaints from lumads of Compostela Valley about illegal logging activities inside their ancestral domains.
"We've been receiving reports but we have not confirmed it," he said.
Nalla said the complaints were however not in detail thus they are now determining the area where the logging activity is happening.
He said they have received numerous complaints before, but had not confirmed any so far.
On Sunday, Duterte urged the DENR to look into illegal logging operations inside ancestral domains.
Lawyer Bernardo Delima of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples meanwhile said that if ever there are illegal logging inside ancestral domains this could have been perpetrated by lowlanders and not by the indigenous peoples themselves.
He said this is because some of the lumads have been duped by the lowlanders into selling their lands for lower price.
The buyers in turn, Delima said, have exploited the rich natural resources inside these ancestral domains by cutting down trees.
Delima however warned buyers of lands inside the ancestral domains the purchase of the land is illegal from the very beginning and that the court would never recognize any contract that purports to the sale of a land declared as ancestral domain.
Datu Edgardo Laidan, president of Katribu Mindanao, meanwhile said that indeed there are cutting of trees inside their ancestral domain in Marilog.
He said though that the trees he saw were Gemelina trees.
Laidan believes that cutting of Gemelina trees is not prohibited by the government.
It was learned that there are 105,408 hectares all over Region 11 that have certificate of ancestral domain claims.
(December 9, 2004 issue)
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