Recto: Government reforestation project is only P7.50 per hectare

The government should deploy paramilitary units as forest rangers and tree planters to realize its reforestation efforts on approximately eight million hectares of denuded forest land nationwide, an administration senator said yesterday.

Sen. Ralph Recto said the country’s 52,000-strong Civilian Armed Forces Geographic Unit (CAFGU) should be tapped to work as forest rangers and tree planters on top of their work of guarding communities against communist rebels.

Recto said a lack of budget would delay the government’s reforestation efforts after he learned that the government’s budget for reforestation this year is pegged at only P7.50 per hectare.

The senator said the amount is not enough to cover all of the country’s forest lands. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) only has P60 million in funds this year to reforest some eight million hectares of logged-over lands, Recto said.

"Instead of running after insurgencies they often do not see, CAFGUs can stop illegal loggers who do their thing in the open," he said. "In many barrios today, the threat comes from those who are bearing chainsaw, not the communist manifesto."

Recto made this proposal in a bid to prevent a repeat of the tragedy that struck the provinces of Aurora and Quezon and claimed thousands of lives with flashfloods that accompanied heavy rains from back-to-back typhoons in December last year.

Recto said the government allocated a budget of P 1.44-billion this year for the CAFGU, a sum equivalent to 24 times the allocation for the DENR’s community forestry projects.

In areas where the forests are denuded, the CAFGU personnel may be asked to be more productive by planting trees, Recto said. In return, CAFGU personnel will be given additional allowances for the added responsibility.

"The CAFGUs can temporarily fill the void in forest rangers," the senator said. "They are already in place. They man checkpoints, they know the territory. They have guns (which they may need to) confront armed poachers."

There are only 4,000 DENR-accredited forest rangers, while each CAFGU volunteer would guard an average of 3,700 hectares of forest, Recto said.

He expressed confidence that CAFGU personnel are fit for the job because they have proper training and guidance from their superiors in the Armed Forces of the Philippines. — Christina Mendez