A LOGGING company operating in Surigao del Sur for decades now is apprehensive that the prolonged logging ban imposed by the government would do more harm than good to the remaining forest particularly inside its concession area.
Surigao Development Corporation (Sudecor) said that the government’s declaration of a total log ban through Executive Order (EO) 23, which sought to stop illegal logging, and as a consequence also stopped legitimate logging operations, is resulting to illegal logging being perpetrated in a wider scale.
Sudecor, which presented its position during the recently conducted seminar workshop ,“Taking Stock on Natural Acount and the Role of the Press” hosted by the Philippine Press Institute, claimed that EO 23 is a flawed logic in natural resource utilization and management since, although it stopped logging, but mining companies were allowed to operate even in residual dipterocarp (dipt) forests and sub-marginal forests - tropical rain forest dominated by leguminous and lesser utilized species- and even in areas proclaimed watershed.
EO 23 was declared in 2011 after massive flooding hit several areas in Mindanao.
Sudecor has been implementing sound forest management and development practices for more than 40 years. The concessionaire maintains one of the best growing stocks of naturally regenerated dipterocarp forest in the Philippines. By closely adhering to prescribed forestry laws, rules and regulations, the company has been able to maintain a green mantle of tropical forest vegetation, which covers approximately 92 percent of its concession area. It adapted the 1992 government policy banning logging of old-growth forests, and has maintained profitability by harvesting well-stocked secondary forests, under careful silvicultural prescriptions.
“When the log ban was enforced beginning February 2011, Sudecor was forced to shut down its operations, and retaining only a skeletal force to undertake minimum compliance to the Integrated Forest Management Agreement conditionalities,” said Rowill Aguillon, officer-in-charge resident manager.
He said that since then, illegal logging became widespread and massive, extracting an average of 160,000 board feet per month as reported cases by our concession guards and the indigenous people inhabiting in the area.
He lamented that kaingin has also expanded more aggressively, converting timberlands into agricultural lands, and in many instances, areas covered by the National Greening Program were also subjected to kaingin, thus destroying residual forests and even old growth forests, only to be planted with Falcatta and other tree crops.
Sudecor’s concession was chosen as an experimental site for special foreign-assisted research projects during the last decade and has also hosted field observations and study tours.
“The Sudecor concession area is a living testimony to the reality of sustainable forest resources amid development. It demonstrates that the forest has astounding ability to regenerate itself after certain degrees of perturbations only if a committed and conscientious forest management sustains the flow of goods and services from the forest to society,” said Dr. Rex Victor Cruz, Professor, UPLB CFNR, adding that “Sudecor’s concession area affirms the soundness of selective logging system once properly implemented..”
Cruz, a noted watershed expert, said that the conservation of biodiversity together with soil, water and other forest resources and processes can be compatible to great lengths with many of our socioeconomic development objectives, and the Sudecor forest concession area does not only match but in many respects outshines the other forests.
It has splendid stands of dipterocarps and other timber species along with non-timber plants. Despite having been logged twice already, the diversity seems to have remained at almost the pre-logging state.”
Dr. Roberto Rubio, also a professor, UPLB, CFNR and Zoology expert underscored Sudecor’s forest concession, “which had been managed very well.”
Rubio said that Sudecor’s reforestation projects promoted refuge for many wildlife species. The company’s strict protection measures had practically excluded poachers that resulted to the maintenance of good populations of wild animals within the forest.
“If only Sudecor’s experience could be applied and multiplied in other forest concessions of the country, only then can we be assured that biodiversity, in particular animal wildlife, will be taken care of.” Rubio said.
“The log ban has led to more losses in forest cover. Without a mechanism for sustainable forest management, the Philippines will lose many things, including watersheds, biodiversity and others,” Aguillon said.
He said that if the direction of the government is merely to plant trees, with emphasis on tree crops like falcatta, and agro-forestry like cacao and coffee, biodiversity will be seriously undermined.
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