Since last June, North Cotabato’s peace and order council, chaired by Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, has impounded 14 trucks loaded with flitches of banned species of forest trees from ARMM towns.
The trucks were intercepted while passing through the province en route to neighboring cities in Central Mindanao.
In a statement faxed to selected media outfits, Piñol, known for his iron-fisted policy in dealing with lawless groups, said North Cotabato’s police director, Superintendent Melchor Loyola, is now facing a case in a court in Marawi City, a component area of ARMM, for merely performing his duty of impounding questionable forest products.
"Very influential people are behind these logging activities. They can pull strings and harass the people whom they think obstruct their operations," Piñol said.
Piñol said the provincial board and his office agreed to impose, starting the other day, a province-wide ban on the cutting of trees to prevent poachers from outside the province from encroaching into the remaining forestlands in North Cotabato.
"The provincial government is ready to pay for an extensive survey of the forested boundary of the ARMM provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur with North Cotabato to set demarcations and prevent the exploitation of the remaining forestlands in our province by outsiders," Piñol said.
He said he has tasked all local government units in the province to stop loggers from using farm-to-market roads, provincial roads and national highways as transport routes for forest products coming from outside the province.
Mayor Vivencio Bataga of Parang, Maguindanao earlier banned trucks transporting logs from nearby forested areas to buyers in Cotabato City, from passing through his municipality.
Bataga, who has survived three assassination attempts since April, and his subordinates have seized more than 5,000 cubic meters of logs and flitches while they were being transported to Cotabato City.
Last week, Bataga’s office intensified its campaign against the cutting of trees in forested areas around Parang to protect a watershed not far away from the town proper where a costly, foreign-funded water system is being built.
In 1995, an in-depth study by then ARMM Gov. Lininding Pangandaman and his environment secretary, Sultan Tanny Unda, revealed that poachers and slash-and-burn farmers (kaingineros) had been destroying at least five hectares of the region’s forest cover a week, a trend feared to leave the entire region, including the watersheds around the legendary Lake Lanao, barren by 2020.