Opinion

Online trolling against Masungi to smear Leonardo DiCaprio

GOTCHA - Jarius Bondoc - The Philippine Star

October 11, 2024 | 12:00am

BBC News has unearthed a troll campaign against Masungi Georeserve reforestation in the Upper Marikina Watershed.

The trolls attack celebrity endorsers of Masungi conservation, like Leonardo DiCaprio, Dr. Jane Goodall and Greta Thunberg.

A hundred fake Facebook accounts, created only hours apart, were traced to a Filipino “reputation specialist.” While boasting of a senator as client, the latter ignored BBC News’ requests for comment. He even took down his corporate and personal websites.

“You’re wrong, DiCaprio” or “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Those are among the common starters in scripted FB exchanges. Other accounts then join the bashing of Masungi Georeserve Foundation (MGF).

The dummy accounts also share DENR content – mostly false statistics from high officials. DENR denies any ties to them.

Past DENR chiefs Gina Lopez and Roy Cimatu had tapped MGF to rewild 3,000 hectares of denuded forest. MGF originally regreened 430 hectares in the 1990s.

Present DENR bosses want to evict MGF, allegedly for unconstitutional contract. It prefers projects that will ruin the forest:

• Prisons bureau offices and staff houses along the slopes, and

• Windmills for a Singaporean powerplant right beside 65-million-year-old limestone formations.

Those triggered global protests against DENR. Conservationists and celebrities rallied around multi-awarded MGF.

DiCaprio, with 62-million online followers; Goodall, who researched chimpanzees for decades and teenage environment activist Thunberg are among Masungi’s defenders.

Plus Filipino visitors Anne Curtis, Nadine Lustre, Glaiza de Castro, Arci Muñoz, Stacey Gabriel, Karen Davila, DJ Chacha, Ted Failon, Noli De Castro, Justin De Dios and John Arcilla, among others.

FB took down most of the fake accounts and pages after BBC exposed them in a Sept. 25 podcast and Sept. 28 news. They had cartoon profile pictures and sketchy names.

FB found them violating rules: “engaging in deceptive, spammy activity, including amplifying content using fake accounts to make it appear more popular than it was.”

The trolling couldn’t match the reach of MGF’s famous supporters. But it aimed to scare and demoralize MGF leaders and volunteer park rangers, BBC News quoted a tracker of negative messaging.

Sisters Ann and Billie Dumaliang, MGF cofounder and advocacy director, admitted to being dispirited at first. It’s a new battlefield.

But then, they’ve been through worse. On her first day at work with MGF, Billie heard automatic gunfire while talking with a forester on the mobile. Goons were shooting at the volunteers. Another time, two rangers were hospitalized due to mauling.

The attackers were hirelings of a dozen unlicensed picnic resorts that divert riverflow onto swimming pools. Also, of 30 landgrabbers exposed in this column Sept. 8, 2023. In reply, DENR claimed to be cancelling false titles obtained from crooked insiders since 2006.

Mountain forest denudation causes deadly floods below.

In the wake of Typhoon Enteng last Sept. 1-4 DENR Sec. Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga reported to President Bongbong Marcos that “85 percent of the protected landscape is still covered in forest and vegetation.” Usec. Carlos Primo David claimed in a dzBB interview that it was 60 percent.

But DENR’s own official published report states:

• Intact forest, 6,420.87 hectares, 25.21 percent of area;

• Scattered trees, shrubbery, grass, 15,493.3 ha, 60.82 percent;

• Agriculture (slash-and-burn farming), 2,772.23 ha, 10.88 percent;

• Built-up (structures), 776.27 ha, 3.05 percent;

• Barren, 11.12 ha, 0.04 percent.

Manila Observatory, where Yulo-Loyzaga was active before joining DENR, has a study showing only eight percent forest cover in 2016. Another research deplores denudation at 408 hectares a year since 2000.

In a dzRH interview, David justified illegal tree cutting by kaingeros: “Yes, we have laws, but it’s not always ‘you’re doing something illegal, therefore you should be out of there.’ … We have to understand why they’re there, why they’re converting this precious forest land into something else.”

Billie counters: “The law prescribes heavy penalties for forest violations. Only Indigenous People and tenured migrants that rely on forests for livelihood may reside in protected areas. Is DENR ignoring the law and neglecting its duty to stop encroachers?”

David further said: “I looked at satellite images, those are dwellings, not large subdivisions. Perhaps it started with one or two farmhouses, then grew into communities. These are not the people we think of them to be.”

Tribesfolk and environmentalists report otherwise. A PNP general once linked to drugs, a real estate developer and a quarrier each occupy 100-1,000 hectares.

A former DENR chief and politico owns the largest of 16 quarries in adjacent Montalban Watershed, part of the Upper Marikina ecosystem. He and David were college contemporaries and members of the same fraternity.

Listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0jsbbj6