Guardians of the forest

I flew to Naga City on a rainy Wednesday morning. It was a very early flight and I slept through most of it. I woke up as the pilot announced that we were landing soon. I looked out the window and saw that the landscape was green and flat, with a lot of coconut trees and rice fields. I am so used to seeing the sea and Cebu’s bony mountains that getting a different view jolts me.

The Naga City Airport runway is short and reminded me of the old Lahug Airport before it became IT Park. I would later learn that the airport is in the Municipality of Pili, Camarines Sur and not in Naga City. A pretty policeman cradling an armalite waited on the tarmac. I have been to Masbate once but it was my first time to be in what I consider to be the “real” Bicol.

I was going to meet members of the Mt. Isarog Guardians in Barangay Panicuason, Naga City for work. I wanted to observe how Bantay Dagat and Bantay Gubat are trained as paralegals but could not find a training workshop that fit my schedule. The next best thing was to ask some of them what they knew about the environmental laws they sought to enforce and what they thought they still needed to learn about the subject.

Barangay Panicuason is a 45-minute jeepney ride from the center of Naga City. I was told to get off at the Naga View Adventist College and to ask for directions there. I would later find out that there was no one at the main gate of the college and that its administration building was a twenty-minute walk from the gate. There were no tricycles for hire inside the campus. Thankfully, a motorcycle arrived to fetch me before my sedentary self encountered more surprises.

Twenty-one Guardians were waiting at the shed they use as a base when we arrived. Two of them were stirring the contents of huge cauldrons on makeshift stoves on the ground. Typhoon Kiko made his presence felt and the banana leaves noisily flapped in the wind. The air felt so clean that I wanted to bottle it and take it home.

We sat inside the shed and I listened to the Guardians talk about their experiences as stewards of Mt. Isarog. Some of them were vocal about their opinions but most kept to themselves and just listened. They all seemed to agree that preserving Mt. Isarog is important and believed that they are successful in their mission to do so because of the support of the local government, specifically their mayor, Mr. Jesse M. Robredo. He is serving his last term and there is concern about whether or not his successor will care about the environment as much as he does.

Mt. Isarog is a protected area and was declared a forest reserve in the 1930s. The Guardians were organized in the late 1990s to protect the mountain from illegal activities. The ones I met serve voluntarily and do not receive any compensation for their efforts. However, they are tapped for community-based reforestation projects and serve as guides for ecotourism. Recently, they received a grant from the Department of Tourism consisting of camping equipment that tourists who want to climb the mountain can rent.

We walked to a field after lunch and waited in vain for the clouds to part so we could see the peak of Mt. Isarog. The Guardians proudly pointed to a reforested site which they claimed was bare 20 years ago. I wish I could hear more people say the same thing about the mountains in their towns and cities.

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