THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) partnered with a group of upland farmers in bringing back trees in a portion of grassland ecosystem in Zambales.
Malatapi Community Livelihood Center Incorporated (MCLCI) in Candelaria town, a people’s organization and beneficiary of the DENR’s Community-Based Forest Management Program (CBFMP), uses a cost-efficient way and enhanced the establishment of second-growth forest.
“MCLCI has managed to reforest a total of 60-hectare grassland portion of their CBFMP area without planting any seedlings or additional cost from us but through Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR),” DENR Assistant Regional Director Arthur Salazar said.
“What the upland farmers did is to find surviving tree species or seedlings including wildlings in the grassland area, then, they uprooted the grass around the tree, combined with grass pressing by foot to clear the surrounding of the tree species from weeds. This method of forest restoration is technically called as ANR,” he explained.
ANR is a cost-efficient technology of rehabilitating degraded forest land and shrub vegetation by taking advantage of trees already growing in the area, and by protecting and nurturing it.
“They have protected the tree species from grass fire and grazing by establishing fire lines or fire breaks to make sure its survival. They have also constructed look-out tower for regular monitoring against any forest disturbance,” he said.
In a statement, DENR Regional Executive Director Paquito Moreno Jr said ANR is a technology being promoted by the Association of South East Asian Nation- Republic of Korea Forest Cooperation Organization (AFoCO) to fast track the restoration of degraded forest lands and watershed with less cost to the government.
“This AFoCO project in Zambales is only one of the demonstrations of ANR technology. It is also being applied in Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Singapore to improve the ASEAN region’s forest,” he said.
The four-year project, which was started in 2016, provided MCLCI with various skills training on ANR application, forest development, landscape restoration, and vulnerability assessment.
Recently, 16 international delegates from Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, and Korea visited the ANR area of MCLCI to observe the successful implementation of the technology, exchanged best practices and experiences in forest restoration.
MCLCI is composed of 35 members and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission since 1997, managing more than 1,400 hectares of forestland under the CBFMP. (PIA- Central Luzon)