Caraga tree farmers not happy with lifting of log ban

SAN LUIS, Agusan del Sur — Some 31,000 tree farmers yesterday said they are not happy with President Arroyo’s decision to lift the log ban in the region though their main source of livelihood is the wood industry.

Gregorio Mitchao, president of the Caraga Tree Farmers Federation Inc., told The STAR in an interview that lifting the log ban in Caraga and three other regions in the country does not actually affect nor encourage tree farming since only big logging operators will benefit from it.

Mitchao, who is also chairman of the Mindanao Coordinating Council for Tree Farming, claimed that lifting the log ban will specifically only benefit holders of the Timber License Agreement (TLA), Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA), Socialized Integrated Forest Management Agreement (SIFMA) and Community-based Forest Management Agreement (CBFMA).

A registered forester, Mitchao said these agreements involve hundreds of hectares of public timberlands to be utilized by huge logging operators or capitalists who signed an agreement with the government through the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

Florio Josafat Jr., president of the 15,000-strong BIBAHILITA Tree Farmers Association, on the other hand, claimed that in most cases, huge logging firms are the number one violators of forest protection laws because of the inability of the government to monitor huge operations.

Environment Secretary Michael Defensor admitted in an interview with The STAR that the DENR lack manpower to monitor illegal logging activities in about 15 million hectares of forest lands.

"At present, there is one available aging forest ranger to every 4,000 hectares of timberland and he is also unarmed," Defensor said.

The tree farmers said they want total deregulation of tree farming activities because DENR regulations only breeds corruption.

They reiterated that while logging firms are hard to monitor because of the huge logging area, small tree farmers are easy to watch because they can easily be found anywhere and there is an association that can police their ranks.