‘Identify officials who restored Sierra Madre logging contract’

An alliance of fishermen pressed Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Angelo Reyes yesterday to identify the Malacañang officials allegedly behind the reinstatement of a logging contract covering 36,660 hectares of the Sierra Madre mountain range.

Reyes, according to the Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya), is "highly obligated" and "legally and morally obliged" to name the Palace officials allegedly responsible for restoring the forestry contract of Timberland Forest Products Inc. (TFPI).

"Let’s call a spade a spade. If Secretary Reyes wants to score a giant kill against large-scale and destructive logging, the first thing he must do is to tell the Filipino people the mastermind behind the hair-splitting and disgusting return of the TFPI in the logging scene. We will not accept a no-comment response from Reyes," said Fernando Hicap, Pamalakaya national chairman.

Hicap said the reinstatement of TFPI’s integrated forest management agreement (IFMA) shows that the Office of the President is willing to accommodate large-scale logging at all cost even at the expense of the welfare of the people and environment.

Massive logging in the Sierra Madre mountains was blamed for the disastrous flash floods and landslides that struck Quezon and Aurora in 2004, which left several people dead, thousands of families homeless, and millions of pesos worth of crops and property destroyed.

Over the weekend, the Quezon Provincial Multisectoral Forest Protection Council and two other environmental non-government organizations revealed that TFPI’s forestry contract was restored through a final Malacañang decision.

According to the three groups, the residents and officials of Real, Infanta and General Nakar towns have long opposed the company’s 25-year IFMA granted on Nov. 12, 2002, covering 36,660 hectares in the Quezon portion of the Sierra Madre.

On Jan. 13, 2004, former DENR Secretary Elisea Gozun revoked the IFMA allegedly due to "fraud, misrepresentation and omission of material facts" in the way it was granted.