Every crisis situation presents beautiful opportunities that bring out the best in people. Every crisis situation, if properly managed, can also allow for future dangers and threats to be averted as well. The recent pest infestation at the Buhisan Watershed allowed such opportunities to emerge and thankfully, hopefully, the worst may be over within September or earlier, with the great collaborative help of people and of God's wonderful nature.
The pest infestation at Barangay Toong and within the Buhisan Watershed brought together various local partners (from the Cebu city government, the barangays, academe, NGOs, media, DENR, among others) and even as far as the University of the Philippines in Los Baños and Seafdec in Iloilo.
We would like to thank and acknowledge the very kind, quick responses from Dr. Inocencio "Jun" Buot, now the Dean of the Open University of the UP Los Baños who connected us with entomologist Aimee Barrion Dupo of UPLB who suggested that we send live specimens of the caterpillars for correct identification and more solid basic research about the pests that appear to love to feast on teak as their steak! Ms. Geofe Cadiz of UP Cebu and Mark Andres of SWU, now a graduate student at USC, also sent us emails expressing their joint concern and interest in contributing their share to help resolve the pest problem.
Global partners also pitched in their advice related to this problem.
The United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) promptly relayed our call to all RCE (regional center of expertise on education for sustainable development) global partners for urgent advice related to information and control of the pests identified as "gravis moths" or the "eutectona machaeralis." Lyle Benko of UNU RCE Saskatchewan alerted our attention to the useful website of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (http://www.iufro.org) suggested by expert Karen Tanino.
From Japan, our scholar Lawrence Liao of the Graduate School of Biosphere Science Faculty of Applied Biological Sciences of Hiroshima University speedily sent us several emails, including a very informative article about similar pests that affected the teak plantations in India. Eric Floreto, a former scholar to Japan, now in Canada, also promptly sent in his comments.
Lawrence and Eric, both graduates of the University of San Carlos, connected us, in turn, to ecologist Teodora Bagarinao of SEAFDEC , Iloilo who advised us to " rest easy; it is not as bad as it looks." She explained that " n your case, the til-as are just making a living and in a few days more they will stop eating the teak leaves, pupate, become moths and probably fly away. Your teak trees will probably survive, and even grow more luxuriantly, just like fire trees do after the eras (the ilongo term for til-as) season. Just observe what happens this next year. Your teak area probably does not have enough birds to pick off the til-as so many survive through the caterpillar phase."
Ms. Humaida Jumalon also furnished us with her email to Lawrence where she mentioned that she will contact and ask " Gali Encabo, who is now connected with the Florida University's McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity if they have any expert on lepidoptera pests. Ms. Jumalon also shared that Gali said the McGuire Center has now the biggest lepidoptera collection in the world.
Even University of the Philippines President Emer Roman who is in the United States now responded to our SOS for expert help and emailed and gave us names to contact experts within the UP system!
The speedy response, concern, advice and assistance of all these global and local (glocal) partners were overwhelming and inspiring and showed us that the way to confront future challenges can be made easier with glocal collaboration!
The presence of local, multisectoral partners at Thursday's meeting presided by Councilor Nida Cabrera was also a cause for joy and optimism that the infestation of the teak (scientifically called tectona grandis) by the teak skeletonizers (the gravis moth or the eutectona machaeralis) can be resolved with the collaboration of partners as well as nature.
Already, because of the rains this week, there are happy reports of less brown skeletal leaves sighted in the area.
Still and all, the multisectoral partners need to collaborate and prepare together to avert similar pest infestations through more basic research, through more education and information campaign, especially among the watershed residents, about forests and their protection as well as about the other insects, birds and other creatures that consider the forest as their home, and through better policy advocacies and healthier forest practices, among other suggested measures.
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Email: cherryb_thefreeman@yahoo.com