Presidential Assistant for Climate Change Secretary stresses planting of indigenous trees than exotic ones

TACLOBAN CITY – “Indigenous trees should be given more importance than exotic trees in conducting tree planting.

Those were the words of encouragement that Presidential Assistant for Climate Change Secretary Elisea Gozun at the Climate Change Forum held at the Bureau of Internal Revenue Regional Office 8 attended by BIR personnel and employees headed by Regional Director Attorney Diosdado Mendoza, information officers of various government agencies headed by the Philippine Information Agency, business groups and the academe.

Department of Environment and Natural Resources Executive Regional Director Manolito Ragub was also present during the forum, who agreed to what Gozun said.

The essence of planting indigenous trees than those that are from other countries like the Gmelina and Mahogany, according to Gozun, is that some of those tree variants do not adopt to our country’s climate and to our soil.

“It is good that we plant trees, but what should support is planting of our indigenous tree species that are already tested through times that they will grow in our land, as they can easily adopt to our environment and soil,” Gozun said.

Among these indigenous trees, according to Gozun, are the Yakal, Agoho, Banaba, Ipil, Molave, Lumbang, Narra, Pili and Tanguile.

In the region, the Energy Development Corporation promotes uses of indigenous tree seedling for their reforestation project in the town of Kananga where their operation for geothermal plant is located.
Their program called Binhi started with the few remaining seedlings of these trees and grow them into Mother Trees in planting sites where they can be best protected and nurtured.

Among the indigenous tree species that are planted by the company are the Mancono, world’s hardest wood which is endemic to the Philippines; various dipterocarps such as Red Lauan, Tanguile, Tiaong, Almon, Bagtikan, Mayapis, which are marketed internationally as Philippine Mahogany known as among the world’s finest lumber; Saraca and Amherstia, regarded as King and queen of flowering trees, respectively.

“We should not plant trees for the sake of planting but for the sake of our ecosystem,” she stressed.

In the previous budgetary hearing for the DENR, Gozun recalled that the environment office of the government had only allotted 5% budget for indigenous trees in their more than P2 billion budget for tree planting while bigger portion of the budget was given to exotics trees that comes from abroad reason they threatened the DENR to be sued if they will not change their budgetary alignment for tree planting program in line with the greening program of the government.

“It was good that they heeded to our suggestion and Secretary Ramon Paje is very supportive to our suggestion for promotion of indigenous trees,” she added.

Gozun also stressed that those who are conducting tree planting should now focus not on planting alone but to ensure that the tree seedlings that they plant will grow.

“It should not be called tree planting but tree growing,” she added giving a new name to tree planting program of the government stressing in the importance of ensuring that each tree seedling to be planted will grow as the government spend budgetary amount for each seedling.