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Indigenous Initiatives in Forest Management
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Masipag News & Views
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Oct 27, 2001 21:27 PDT
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THE INDIGENOUS AND PRAGMATIC INITIATIVES
IN THE MANAGEMENT OF RESIDUAL FOREST
(The Experience of Marcos Flores)
In one of the 36 sub-village clusters of Basak village, in Cauayan town,
Negros Occidental province, there lies a communal forest maintained by a
group of forest dwellers. Alongside this group initiative rests a lush
portion of different tree species, many of which look unfamiliar even to
the settlers of the area.
Beyond these groves unfurl the decaying remainders of cut timber,
cogonal grass areas devoid of large trees, with balding slopes, fading
forest covers being replaced by commercial crops, residues of slashed
and burnt trees being made into charcoal, and new houses built along the
thinly forested riverbank.
This is Sitio Bel-at, a largely sloping, residual forest in central
Philippines, with a total land area of 50.5 hectares and home, at the
latest count, to 12 upland dwelling households and some forest
encroachers.
Dark bald years
Decades ago, Sitio (sub-village) Bel-at was a farmland covered largely
by cogon grass, had rapidly eroding topsoil and rivers drying up due to
the loss of watershed.
The Insular Lumber Company (ILCO), a logging firm, began cutting trees
in the late 1950s until the late 1972. At the same time, the military
engaged in the profitable timber business since 1962 cutting down trees
normally spared by ILCO.
Meanwhile, the booming sugar industry of the province resulted to
displacements of small farmers in the lowlands with old and emerging
sugar lords expanding their domains. This resulted to an upward movement
of landless and dispossessed farmers and sacadas or sugar workers.
Bringing with them lowland farming culture, these people ended up doing
an unsustainable slash-and-burn farming methods.
Increasing pressures of population growth in Basak brought more problems
over the management and sustainable use of the residual forest. Basak,
has a village center and 36 sitios surround it. The demand for wood
charcoal for fuel was high. Massive production of charcoal started in
1987.
Nong Macking: the barefoot environmentalist
“Bahala malasang na da basta mubalik lang ang pispis (If my trees make a
jungle only to make the birds come back, so be it.)”
Thus declared Marcos Flores, the man behind the regained beauty of Sitio
Bel-at.
Nong Macking, as he is known in the area, is 56 years old, a father of
12, and considers himself the only remaining Tumandok (native or pioneer
settlers) in Sitio Bel-at. He finished second grade in elementary
education. Poverty, demands for farm chores and inaccessibility of
school made him stop schooling. He learned basic reading and writing
from his mother.
Initial drive to turn his farm into a forest was born out of a romantic
idea to leave a legacy of native trees for his children and
grandchildren. It bears fruits today with the lush greens of Sitio
Bel-at and the ripple effect it created in the province.
But Nong Macking has his fair share of blame in forest destruction. He
used to be a carabao logger (a small-scale logger selling lumber to
timber companies or sawing mills).
He was 18, still single, when he went back to his family in Sitio Bel-at
after joining a throng of sacadas or sugar cane workers in south central
town of Binalbagan in 1965. While tending a three-hectare farm owned by
his uncle, he was also doing extra job selling logs to a downtown
businessman. He was earning 15 to 25 cents for every board foot of
hardwood or softwood.
In the 1970s, already married, to Asia village in Hinobaan town. While
tilling a rented land, Nong Macking augmented his meager income through
a number of other activities including sawing lumber in collaboration
with a pantat or forest guard for five years. Later, he got casual
income from gold panning, earning P400 to P1,000 a week.
Gold mining subsided in 1982 and Nong Macking went back timber cutting,
then was also declining due to the considerable loss of large woods.
Contracting malaria for staying in a logging site, he eventually shifted
to pananggot tuba (coconut wine making) earning an average of P30 a day.
In the 1980s, Nong Macking was an active active organizer for the local
Basic Christian Community (BCC) fighting for the rights and welfare of
marginalized rural dwellers. That was also the period of intensifying
war between government troopers and the communist-led New People’s Army
(NPA) guerillas.
The situation worsened when his son joined the NPA guerillas. In 1987,
Nong Macking decided to return to Sitio Bel-at to spare his family from
troubles.
Using the money from sale of his pigs, Nong Macking purchased five
hectares of land at a low price of P5,000 from his father-in-law. But
the sub-village was not spared from the raging war forcing many families
to abandon Bel-at. Nong Macking and his family chose to stay. It was
here in Bel-at that Nong Macking developed his interest and skills in
forest management.
Regreening Sitio Bel-at
Macking began planting Tumandok or native tree species in the ‘70s. The
first wildlings and seeds he broadcast were sangil, lamaraw and miaw.
Some other native trees in the forest and the neighboring Sitio
Balagtingon are hardly found in other places because they are endemic to
one locality. In 1987, the native trees were multiplied by propagating
the number of wildlings and seeds on his five hectares of upland farm.
Nong Macking has a collection of more than 220 tree species, many of
which are endemic to the places from which the seeds were procured. He
maintains an inventory of their local names, their commercial,
botanical, medicinal and other uses, as well as their respective
botanical categories.
Currently, he is the caretaker of the 9.5 hectares communal
reforestation project purchased by the affiliated federation of his
organization, the Asosasyon sg Magagmay nga Mamumug-on sa Bel-at
(Association of Marginal Upland Farmers in Bel-at) where he sits also as
secretary.
The communal forest is planted with more than 3,000 gmelina (Gmelina
arborea) trees and 4,000 mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) trees. There
are also quite a number of eucalyptus and several species of hardwoods
and softwoods. More than 70% were planted by Nong Macking and the rest
by the organization.
Managing residual forest: employing indigenous knowledge
Nong Macking claims to have learned his unique skills in identifying
tree species from an old Tumandok native named Iyoy Olay. He was a
respected elder and considered the authority in the area.
Olay taught him to identify different species of trees and other plants,
their uses and their different categories. Nong Macking learned to
distinguish the different tree species amidst thousands of trees by
recognizing the size and the color of their leaves. At times, he would
discern the texture or smell of their bark.
He also learned from Olay the different preparations for using forest
resources for medicinal and pest management purposes. He also discovered
that there were bigger, harder and finer looking trees like the native
version of the dipterocarp narra, known locally as manggatsapuy (Hopea
acuminata).
Nong Macking also takes cue from the bird. One type of tree called
sangil caught Nong Macking’s attention when the monkeys were brawling
over its sweet fruit. The seeds have a thick casing. He noticed that
most of its seeds which fell under the mother tree took several months
to germinate. Meanwhile, the same seeds exposed under the heat of the
sun or swallowed and excreted by the birds germinated more quickly. The
heat must have something to do with the germination process, he
realized.
This biological process led him to develop a method to hasten the
germination of thick-skinned seeds, by soaking them in boiled water for
5 minutes. This process allows heat to break the seeds’ hard covering
and facilitates the release of the ectoderm. Upon draining, Nong Macking
planted the seeds in bags with fertile soil. After 15 days, Nong
Macking observed the seeds began to grow. Among the thick-skinned seeds
he tried experimenting with were hunop, banuyo, baganga, biga-a, alod,
alawihaw and anunay.
Fruits of hard labor
Today, Nong Macking harvests the fruits of his labor. He is now engaged
in furniture making has using wood from the trees he has planted. He has
also conserved and marketed more than 20,000 species of native seedlings
annually reaching as far as Bacolod City, the province’s capital. Local
government, Church, people’s organizations and even schools buy
seedlings from him for their reforestation projects.
Now, at least three organizations have set up their own nurseries, Nong
Macking has more opportunities to exchange his collections with theirs.
His nursery collections have reached as far as Bacolod City because Nong
Macking has been assisted with marketing by a Bacolod-based NGO called
Paghiusa sa Paghidaet-Negros (PsPN). He is happy to find some results
of his endeavor to propagate native trees, especially when he learns
that the tree seedlings he has given to other individuals or
organizations have now matured.
Rice fields in the village proper and the neighboring sitios are now
benefiting from the operation of a national irrigation system, with the
watershed areas restored.
NGO assistance
In 1989, the nongovernment organization Paghida-et sa Kauswagan
Development Group (PDG) was expanding its base of Peoples’
Organizations (POs). PDG, a member NGO of the Masipag network, supported
Nong Macking’s past initiatives facilitating linkages with other POs to
propagate native trees.
Through PDG and some other affiliated NGOs, the indigenous knowledge of
Nong Macking was was reinforced through seminars, particularly on
education and para-legal action for environmental protection.
In 1989, the Asosasyon sg Magagmay nga Mamumug-on sa Bel-at was
organized through the support of PDG. The objectives of the organization
include the rehabilitation of the forest and the promotion of
sustainable agriculture. When the PUMOLUYO federation was formed also
through the assistance of PDG, the association was a founding member.
The PUMOLUYO federation is an alliance of 34 Peoples’ Organizations
(POs) whose membership is composed of 21 farmer organizations, 10 forest
dwellers’ and upland farmers’ associations and 3 fisher folk groups.
Later, PUMULOYO purchased 9.5 hectares of logged upland as part of the
federation’s mission to rehabilitate logged forests through
reforestation and propagation of trees. A communal forest was set up in
1989 planted with over 8,000 acacia trees. Unfortunately, several years
later, most of the planted trees died due to their inability to adapt to
the physical location and topography, poor soil conditions and
competition from the aggressive self-regeneration of cogon grass. Little
more than 300 seedlings survived.
In 1991, Nong Macking and his group decided to only plant trees that
would have a future commercial purpose. This resolution came as a result
of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ regulation on
the cutting of native trees: owners have to secure a permit to cut trees
even if they planted them. This, however, Nong Macking believes will
reinforce the protection of the native trees from logging.
The Peace and Order Council (POC) of the village has recently instituted
the issuance of permits for families in the areas whose land will be
cleared and existing trees will be cut for the construction of houses.
Nong Macking is a member of the POC. The corresponding obligation of
these families is to replace their cleared land with a minimum of 200
seedlings planted elsewhere on their land
Spreading the cause for environmental protection
The initiatives and leadership demonstrated by Nong Macking have been
drawing the attention of people beyond his affiliated federation. Since
1991, Nong Macking has been invited to speak on seminars and workshops
discussing the propagation of native trees species, and the skills and
insights he has developed in forest management.
A number of NGOs visited village Basak inviting representatives from the
organized groups to access the seminars related to environmental
awareness programs. Nong Macking realized that in addition to the
government’s inefficiency and lack of environmental protection programs,
the people themselves are responsible for environmental degradation. In
one seminar, Nong Macking cried after realizing he partly contributed to
the degradation of the forest through his past experience as an illegal
logger.
In 1993, the former Department of Environment and Natural Resources
(DENR) secretary, Angel C. Alcala, made a historic visit in Basak
acknowledging the efforts initiated by Nong Macking. Secretary Alcala
encouraged the community to follow the same initiative in forest
resource protection and management.
Today, one of the challenges in community-based forest management is
that the transition from mere harvesting of forest resources to making
use of the land’s productivity must be able to meet the urgent food
requirements of old and new settlers. This requires a balancing act
between resource preservation and conservation, resource use and
management of the forest. (MNV)
(Nong Macking is a farmer-member of Masipag in Central Philippine island
of Negros.)
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