'Save the Sierra Madre to avoid another Ondoy'

MANILA, Philippines – The devastation wreaked by typhoon “Ondoy” last year may happen again if the country does not protect the country’s longest mountain range, the Sierra Madre, which continues to be a victim of illegal logging and corruption, a non-government organization said yesterday.

With climate change, the Save Sierra Madre Network (SSMN), chaired by Fr. Pete Montallana, said another Ondoy catastrophe is a “possibility because the forest is destroyed and this would affect the capacity of the trees to absorb the rainwater anytime now until the end of the typhoon season.”

“Another Ondoy can happen or (even) worse,” it added.

The SSMN is bent on raising the Filipinos’ awareness of the effects of climate change, environmental neglect and corruption by commemorating the Ondoy tragedy on Sept. 26 as Save the Sierra Madre Day.

The SSMN, composed of 30 organizations, will mark the tragedy on Sept. 25-26 at Provident Village in Marikina City, which was heavily flooded during Ondoy.

The groups will also plant seedlings at the Marikina watershed, with each seedling dedicated to someone who died in the devastating typhoon.

The 1.5-million hectare Sierra Madre serves as the eastern wall of Luzon, as it straddles the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Aurora, and Quezon.

Since Rizal is located beside Quezon, whenever there are heavy rains on the Quezon side of the mountain range, there is a possibility that the rainwater would spill over to Rizal.

What is disturbing, according to the SSMN, is that Sierra Madre’s biodiversity-rich rainforest and capacity to shield much of Luzon from the raging Pacific storms are fast diminishing due to rampant logging, quarrying, and other “developmental aggressions” such as dam, landfill and garbage dump projects.

The Philippines has failed to protect its forests, as the Haribon Foundation said that in a span of 100 years or from 1900 to 1999, the country’s forest cover had dwindled to less than six percent.