OFFBEAT MAIL

Illegal logging activities in the Sierra Madre mountains are again taking place despite the government's ban on commercial cutting of trees on areas that were identified to have suffered from tremendous rate of forest destructions. And the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), under the tutelage of several secretaries over the years, has introduced reform measures that would eventually put a stop these illegal activities. However, up to now the same problems have recurred despite repeated complaints from concerned citizens and cause-oriented groups who may have experienced the disastrous impacts of illegal logging to the environment. And the culprits are those individuals who only think of making hefty sums of money that could be raised from the illegal cutting of trees without any regard to its effects on their surroundings. Or it could possibly be that some individuals are being exploited by businessmen or politicians to engage in this illegal activity for their

If you witness how deplorable the situation of the Philippines forest resources today, blame it on the the foreign colonizers, whose underlying motives then were to take advantage on the ignorance of the Filipinos. Environmental studies showed that foreign colonizers have abused the rich Philippine forest resources and reaped whatever by-products they could take away in the guise of putting the country's forest resources under the control, ownership and administration of the state. Between 1866 to 1887, the Spanish government, under its Regalian Doctrine, strictly regulated forest use and prohibited unauthorized encroachment into forestlands and illegal cutting of timber, says David Gould in his paper "The Evolution of Land Tenure in Forestry Management in the Philippines" in 2002. Invoking the issuance of Royal Decrees from the Spanish crown, "kaingin" making or shifting cultivation, which was the main source of livelihood of most indigenous people, was prohibi