Wednesday, November 07, 2007 Rotary Clubs in environmental campaign By Edmund B. Sestoso
BAYAWAN CITY, Negros Oriental –- It is an unexpected act for high profile civic groups to go to rural and mountainous places and actively engage in an actual environmental campaign.
But this became a reality when various groups of the Rotary Club of Negros Oriental whose members are mostly mayors, highly placed local officials, businessmen, police officers, military and top caliber professionals banded together last Sunday and proceeded to one rural place and cleaned up the river rescuing it from its almost vanishing state.
The group, according to Dr. Henry A. Sojor--a Rotary official and president of the state-owned Negros Oriental State University (NORSU), is bonding together for the sole purpose of contributing to the protection and preservation of the environment.
The group engaged in mangrove tree planting to help maintain the rivers and artificial corals for the fishes.
Most of their activities are dedicated to Barangay Pagatban, situated at the boundaries of this city and that of neighboring Basay town.
Dr. Sojor said their group, aside from their environmental concerns, will also have activities for the promotion of what he called as eco-tourism.
Most of the members of the Rotary Clubs came from as far as the cities of Dumaguete, Bais, and Tanjay.
The group planted in the nearby river, a mangrove tree known as “baloc-baloc,” a kind of a tree that thrives in the area.
Dr. Sojor said the activity will also help contribute in preserving and maintaining the volume of fresh water fishes in the area.
He further stressed that there is a strong a need to plant this “baloc baloc tress” because the area has no corals for the fishes and that the City Government could not even have a marine sanctuary because the place is already facing the Sulu Sea, very much prone to destruction once a storm hits the place.
“This is our way of helping the people in this part of the community,” stressed the NORSU president in the same interview.
The activity was principally spearheaded by the Rotary Club of Tolong and its Rotaract youth component and other organized Rotary Club groups.
