Palawan rehabilitates its denuded forests

In 1990, former employees of the Palawan Integrated Area Development Project office in Irawan started an annual Feast of the Forest celebration. A few days ago, they commemorated its 16th anniversary by planting more than a hundred thousand tree seedlings at the Irawan watershed. Palawan is the fifth largest island in our archipelago and is a very lucky island because it has not experienced a single earthquake for more than 10,000 years. There was a time when it was called Calamianes and Paragua. Puerto Princesa is the country's greenest and cleanest city and it is good to know that Palawan is a province that is truly concerned with both its urban and rural areas.

The good thing about their annual Feast of the Forest celebration is that it is a project wherein every sector of the community participates – high school and college students, government employees, representatives of the private sector and most important of all, the indigenous tribes such as the Tagbanuas and the Batak. Even the Air Force had a part. Two helicopters from the Western Command headquarters conducted aerial seeding to the great delight of all participants. We have always maintained that the fiesta is our highest community expression and Palawan Feast of the Forest was a fiesta with a cause.

We really believe that this country should move forward if we had a national tree-planting project — not only in the provinces but in all the cities and it should start at the barangay level. We happen to be a resident of Makati City and one of our dreams is to see the railroad track area that has finally been rid of squatters converted into the longest forest in all of Metro Manila. Manila once had a botanical garden. Now, it still has the Arroceros Forest Park. That incidentally was where the main office of the Department of Education was situated when we were the Secretary of Education during President Diosdado Macapagal's time. Believe it or not, the main office of the Education Department then was nothing but a Quonset hut abandoned by the American soldiers. Makati then did not even exist. Makati actually started as an airport with a small solitary building that still exists. Now it is Metro Manila's main commercial center. How times change. And this is important to know. We have to change with the times because the times will not change for us.

The times to come, however, will definitely be better if we had more trees not only in our forests but in our urban centers. We really wished that every city, not only in Metro Manila but everywhere in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao would have a tree-planting program and that it would all start from the barangays. All over the country we have seen signs posted quoting Joyce Kilmer's classic poem on trees. Such posters make us appreciate trees. The problem is not really appreciating trees; it is planting them and propagating them.

What about the other cities of Metro Manila? Surely, they must also have some places where trees would improve not only the beauty of the places but also the pollution. In Manila, Mayor Lito Atienza has unquestionably done a lot to improve the city. Go to Roxas Boulevard at night and the whole area is totally alive with all kinds of restaurants. But he seems to have forgotten where the name Manila came from. It came from nilad, the plant that was found all over. Today one hardly sees any nilad anywhere. The logical thing that should have been done was to grow them around the city hall.