DENR DavNor highlights 2014 NGP, EO 23 feats

TAGUM CITY, DAVAO DEL NORTE January 14 (PIA) - - Department of Environment and Natural Resources chief based in this province emphasized in an interview its accomplishments on the National Greening Program (NGP) and in the implementation of Executive Order 23.

Orly Cariazo, provincial director of the DENR Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (PENRO) in Davao del Norte, stressed that the province rehabilitated 2,127 hectares of forest land on 2014 as part of the NGP.

Dir. Cariazo said that as a reforestation initiative, the office affiliated 16 people’s organization (POs) in ten cities and municipalities in the province to maintain the newly rehabilitated forest.

“The program includes inputs from seedling production to maintenance of the established plantations and each PO was given P-15,000 per hectare for the physical development of the land,” Cariazo said.

He underscored that they targeted to increase the forest cover of the province from 25% on 2010 or about 52,000 hectares to 33% in 2016, 68,000 hectares.

“For this year, we are approximately at 58,000 hectares and we will work on the remaining until 2016,” he said.

On the other hand, Cariazo pointed out the efforts of the Provincial Anti-Illegal Logging Task Force in implementing Executive Order 23 of 2011, which prohibits the cutting and harvesting of timber in the natural and residual forest.

“Through the efforts of the task force and the community, we saw a reduction of 83% in the illegal transported tree products on 2014. For this year, we only have recovered 400 cubic meters compared to thousands of cubic meter years ago,” he said.

Cariazo added that through the quarterly meetings of the task force, we were able to resolve issues and among those were the placement of monitoring stations within the Tagum Liboganon River, which was identified as the passageway of the timber to the lowlands.

The task force was composed of the local government units, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine National Police (PNP), National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ). (PIA11, Michael L Uy)