NDF challenges US-Arroyo Regime to declare log ban in Mindanao

Jorge "Ka Oris" Madlos
Spokesperson
NDF-Mindanao
February 02, 2005

Along with many more medium-sized logging companies, the biggest and worst destroyers of Mindanao forests are the so-called "legal loggers":

1. PICOP Resources Inc. controlled by the Bernardino family - 270,000 hectares in Agusan del Sur, Surigao del Sur and Compostela Valley provinces
2. Nasipit and Anakan Lumber Company which covers 171,700 hectares in Agusan Del Sur, Agusan del Norte, Misamis Oriental and Bukidnon provinces
3. Woodland Domain Inc. which covers 54,000 hectares in Agusan Del Sur;
4. Surigao Development Corp.in Surigao del Sur that is owned by the Puyat family
5. Aras-Asan Timber Corporation in Surigao del Sur

The Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA), Community-based Forest Management (CBFM), Timber License Agreement and other schemes of the government serve as smokescreens for wanton forest destruction. Concessionaires using these schemes cannot thrive without the protection from the military, politicians and the DENR.

In the last more than 50 years the wanton destruction of our forest through "legal" and illegal logging have benefited mainly the big comprador bourgeois, the politicians, big DENR and military officials and their US and Japanese imperialists masters. The insatiable greed of these privileged few is behind the ecological imbalance that brought us natural calamities resulting to the deaths of thousands of poor Filipino peasantfolk, and damage to billions of property.

Forest destruction from "kaingin" farmers are much limited and therefore should not be used as scapegoat to conceal the culpability of these "legal" and illegal loggers.

If the US-Arroyo regime is serious in stopping once and for all the continued denudation of Philippine forests, or Mindanao forests in particular, and start to rehabilitate the ecological balance in the whole island, we challenge the regime to take the following actions:

1. Declare nationwide log ban and immediately revoke all Timber License Agreements, IFMA and other logging schemes. By doing so, millions of hectares of forest and logged-over areas in Mindanao alone will be spared immediately from further damage;

2. Seriously put to stop all illegal logging activities by prosecuting all illegal loggers, AFP and PNP personnel, politicians and DENR officials who connive, consort, co-finance, and protect illegal logging;

3. Sincerely implement reforestation by restoring indigenous species instead of those commercial foreign species that will only hasten the destruction rather than rehabilitate our fast vanishing tropical forest;

4. Immediately implement genuine land reform as fallback for those who are dependent on wood-based industry and implement national industrialization to absorb the displaced workers from logging and other wood-based industry.

The revolutionary movement is committed to protect our forest in a way that we are capable of, considering the fact that this big time "legal" and "illegal loggers" are directly protected by battalions of AFP and paramilitary units. We are also launching reforestation and educational campaigns among the peasant masses for sustainable forest products utilization and management and to minimize if not avoid the damaging effects of "kaingin" farming.

We call upon the people of Mindanao to unite with the whole Filipino people in exposing and opposing the lip service scheme of the US-Arroyo regime against the continuing destruction of our forest. ###

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