Total logging ban ‘ill-advised’

THE forest industry and the academe on Tuesday warned that the worsening problem of illegal logging will escalate if the government will not repeal and fine-tune Executive Order 23, Malacañang’s total logging ban.

President Benigno Aquino III conceived of the total logging ban following the landslides and floods that inundated the Bicol region and parts of the Visayas and Mindanao.

“What we are concerned about is the state of degradation with which forests will be subject to once the legitimate concessions cease to operate and illegal loggers start to abuse whatever is left of ours forests,” UP College of Forestry and Nobel Peace Prize awardee Rex Victor Cruz said.

He said that for every 50,000 hectares of forest land, the Environment Department had estimated that about 10 percent or 5,000 hectares were being infiltrated by illegal loggers based on the number of logs cut illegally that had been seized.

With the moratorium on logging, legitimate logging concessions have temporarily stopped operations but will continue to lose about P45 million a month to pay workers and forest protectors, and in the hope that the government will soon reinstate sustainable scientific logging, analysts say.

Cruz told reporters that logging concessionaires were willing to wait for the President to revoke his order, “but they can only wait for so long. Six months will leave bleed them dry. They are now weighing options.”

The number of forest rangers was not enough to man and protect the forests from illegal loggers, he said. The ratio of rangers to forest area by hectare was 1 to 60,000, when the ideal should be 1 to 4,000, he said.

“We know for a fact that the President was ill-advised,” Ricardo Umali, a forestry and soul specialist, said.

“If the government has the temerity to say that deforestation is the cause of flooding and soil erosion, then that is a misnomer.” Othel V. Campos, Manila Standard Today