Independent Experts Team to Probe Misamis Oriental Timber Firm |
| Publishing date: Monday, Jan. 18, 2010 (1:42 PM) | |
A logging firm allegedly committing technical illegal logging within their concession area in Misamis Oriental will be the maiden case for a scheme hatched last December by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to rid its list of errant holders of forest lease contracts. This, as Acting DENR Secretary Eleazar Quinto today ordered the review of the Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) of Southwood Timber Corp. (STC) by forestry and environmental science experts outside of DENR to ensure impartiality and transparence in the resolution of the STC case. “The assessment of the STC case should get underway within this month as efforts to form a panel of experts for the purpose are already in the works,” said Quinto. |
Quinto’s move is in response to calls from residents and local officials of Gingoog City and Brgy.Minalwang in the town of Claveria in Misamis Oriental to cancel STC’s IFMA for alleged violations of its lease contract, such as harvesting of old-growth trees from identified protection forest inside the firm’s concession area of 11,475.8 hectares in Gingoog City and a portion of Brgy. Claveria.
As a DENR policy, trees in areas at 1,000 meters above sea level are automatically part of protection forests and should not be cut. Cutting of trees in watershed areas are also prohibited.
Last December, then DENR Secretary Lito Atienza approved the allocation of some PhP8 million to fund the audit of all forest lease contracts to be undertaken by an independent body made up of experts in environmental studies and forestry matters outside of the DENR.
Under STC’s 25-year lease contract, the company shall adopt the selective logging system in the harvesting of the mature and over-mature naturally growing trees within IFMA’s production residual natural forests. The company has also committed to establish tree plantations in open and denuded areas which they can harvest upon maturity.
Development activities in an IFMA are allowed in areas that are open with degraded residual forests, as programmed in the Integrated Operations Plan duly approved by the DENR. Trees that may be incidentally cut in the course of these developmental activities, such as road widening and rehabilitation and tree plantation development, may be allowed provided that the corresponding forest charges are paid to the government. Local government units, from provincial unit down to barangay level, get a share from these forest charges.
As a condition to the approval of STC’s IFMA application, which was approved in May 2008, the firm secured a Certificate of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) from affected indigenous cultural communities living inside STC’s concession area. The FPIC was issued to STC in November, 2007 by the Minalwang Higaonon Tribal Council (MIHITCO) through their chieftain Datu Salagaa a.k.a Allan M. Mandokita. The firm was likewise issued a Certificate of Precondition for its IFMA application by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) under NCIP en banc Resolution No. 221, dated April 3, 2008.
The Minalwang Higaonon Tribal Council was granted a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) over 8,000 hectares of area on November 19, 2009, which is inside STC’s IFMA area.
However, the Higaonon people in the area are now opposing STC’s operation. Environmentalists and church-based groups in the province such as the Ecological Care (EcoCare), the Ecology Desk of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro, environmentalists have thrown their support to MIHITRICO’S stance against STC.
http://www.denr.gov.ph/
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