Saving the rainforest, a must now!

The municipality’s environment program has been largely superficial and limited.

When people speak of nature in Puerto Galera, they often relate it to the marine environment.  However, Puerto Galera’s rainforest is equally stunning and equally endangered.

If the marine ecosystem has problems with illegal fishing or pollution, the rainforest biggest enemies are the illegal loggers and the Mangyan slash and burn farming technique called kaingin.

The crux of the matter is the destruction of these natural assets will also destroy tourism, our main source of livelihood. Ironically, many tourism operators are the main customers of illegal lumber.  The proverbial “killing the goose that lays the golden egg” is always true in Puerto Galera, as the community and the government remain in a state of denial when it comes to the continuing, enduring, non-stop destruction of our natural assets.

One cannot ignore the warnings clearly written on the wall.  The recent floods in White Beach are clear indications of the current state of our deteriorating forest cover.  No more trees mean bigger stronger floods.  No more forest means landslides.  One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.  However, talk to local officials and the conservation of the rainforest would be the least of their priorities.

The resort owners would be too busy to talk about nature.  They’d say: “Let them environmentalist handle that.”  Some would say, “That’s the government’s problem.”

Michael Wolfe with wife Bernadette has been knocking on many doors to get as many people involved in saving the rainforest.  He made hiking trails to the boondocks to generate more interests.  In his website, Michael posted moving photos of how hectare by hectare, year by year, the forest becomes victim of human greed.

Michael said that the main destroyer of the rainforest and its ecosystem is the kaingin.  He detailed how some Mangyans would come in to burn one area of the rainforest after the illegal loggers had cut the trees; how kaingin would destroy everything leaving a smoldering land with ashes of former living things; how termites would later eat away the roots and transform the earth into “powder” soil.

Danny Enriquez shares Michael’s concern: “We now realize that everything in nature is inter-related, inter-connected and that the marine environment is affected by what is happening in the mountains.  For example, a loose earth created by extensive kaingin will gradually find its way to the seashore causing siltation and killing the coral reef.”

Now that the primary focus of government is the rehabilitation of the water system, perhaps more attention will be given on the conservation of the watershed areas which is actually our rainforest.  The rainforest acts like a sponge that collects the water.   Even if millions of pesos are spent for infrastructure and nothing for conservation it would ultimately be a foolish venture.