BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya , Philippines – Proving he was not abetting illegal logging activities as critics accused him in the last elections, Isabela Gov. Faustino Dy III vowed to continue the anti-illegal logging efforts of his predecessor, former governor Grace Padaca.
Dy, whose family had been accused of even engaging in illegal logging by their political detractors, said he will maintain the anti-illegal logging task force created by Padaca, a fierce critic of the Dys, during her term.
Padaca’s task force had been deputized by then Environment Secretary Lito Atienza to run after illegal loggers and timber poachers in efforts to save Isabela’s remaining forest cover, including the heavily-threatened Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park.
“Of course, we will be changing the membership of the task force to make it more representative of our constituents by including members from the various sectors of society,” Dy said.
Some two million board feet of lumber or logs, believed to have been illegally cut inside Isabela’s Sierra Madre, part of the bio-diversity corridor that stretches from Cagayan to Quezon, had been seized by Padaca’s task force during her six years as Isabela governor.
The Padaca camp had accused the Dy family and their allies of being among those responsible for the rapid denudation of the forests in the province, adding that illegal logging will begin again once her rivals win.
“That is a blatant lie. We also have children and we will not allow our name to be besmirched by such illegal acts,” he said.
Dy, a former three-term congressman, defeated Padaca in the last elections, regaining the province’s top post, which their family had held for more than three decades before Padaca defeated Dy’s brother, then incumbent governor Faustino Dy Jr., in 2004.
Padaca, also a former hard-hitting radio commentator, had been accusing the Dys as one of those allegedly responsible in denuding significant parts of the province’s Sierra Madre, said to be the second largest remaining forest cover in the country.
In related developments, Dy expressed concern for the thousands of board feet of illegal lumber confiscated by the task force during Padaca’s two terms which, he said, have been left rotting at the provincial capitol compound for the past years.