Now’s the best time to plant trees’—DENR

Saying the wet season is the perfect time to go green, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is calling on the public to take advantage of the weather and plant trees in aid of government’s National Greening Program (NGP).

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje made the call as the DENR geared for the celebration of Arbor Day on Saturday, saying the commemoration is “more significant… as the effort to win back the country’s forest has been launched” under the NGP.

The NGP seeks to reforest some 1.5 billion trees on 1.5 million hectares of government-selected lots from this year until 2016. The program covers just part of roughly eight million hectares of Philippine forestland that is currently “open and degraded,” Paje said.

“It behooves all nature-loving Filipinos to observe Arbor Day every day, and this call becomes even more compelling for all of us considering that the prevailing weather conditions in most parts of the country allow for this very important civic duty,” Paje said in a statement.

He said the rainy season provided the perfect opportunity to grow trees and other plants.

Paje said some 250 volunteers will mark Arbor Day by trekking some two kilometres up the Ipo watershed in Norzagaray, Bulacan on Saturday to plant some 2,500 seedlings of narra and cupang. –Tarra Quismundo, Philippine Daily Inquirer