BAUKO, Mountain Province Against possible threats, members of an indigenous peoples group have shut down a private road leading to a commercial farm that encroached on four hectares of the Mt. Data National Park mossy forest.
“Enough is enough,” said former Mountain Province governor Sario Malinias, chair of the Kabatangan Ancestral Domain Indigenous Peoples Organization (Kadipo). Kadipo was awarded an ancestral domain title in 2009 covering an area of 9,476.53 hectares.
The ancestral domain title covers the threatened mossy forest located in Monamon Sur, Bauko.
Together with Kadipo members, Malinias on Tuesday escorted journalists who covered the supposed indiscriminate cutting of trees in a mossy forest of Mt. Data.
The cutting of trees is reportedly for the expansion of commercial farms from the Benguet side.
Prior to the inspection, Kadipo members blocked the private road which is used as access road by the unscrupulous farmers.
Monamon Sur Punong Barangay Mario Daganos was called in to witness the closure of the access road.
Kadipo members informed journalists that a ranking official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources discouraged them from blocking the road because they might be sued in court.
Undaunted, Kadipo members reached an agreement and shut it down, saying it is the most practical way to stop the further encroachment of the critical mossy forest.
The DENR-CAR was informed about the encroachment. On July 5, the Kadipo wrote and asked Regional Executive Director Clarence Baguilat to take the lead role in preserving Mt. Data.
DENR was also informed Kadipo members planted a thousand trees within the two hectares of the threatened four hectares in 2008.
These trees were uprooted by unscrupulous people who even used a bulldozer to expand their commercial vegetable farms right into the mossy forest section of Mt. Data.
“To our dismay, some unscrupulous people have reentered the area just recently, uprooted the young trees, cultivated a hectare of mossy forest, and prepared the land for farming and are about to plant cabbages when discovered by the indigenous peoples,” reads the letter of Kadipo to Baguilat.
For years now, attempts were made asking the DENR to disestablish Mt. Data as a national park because of the expansion of commercial farms in decades but such move is opposed by some quarters because it will endanger Mt. Data and will result to an environmental disaster.
A study conducted by Dr. Lawrence Heaney of the Field Museum of Natural History based in Chicago, Illinois and Filipino biologist Danilo Balete based in Los Baños, Laguna, revealed deforestation and commercial farming in Mt. Data aggravated the extinction of indigenous mammals.
The study warned of an environmental disaster to happen in Mt. Data within the next 10 years if nothing is done to address these concerns.
“Most of the vegetable farms on Mt. Data are found on the slopes that usually range from 15 to 45 degrees, with some as steep as 60 degrees. The soil is loose and powdery and easily subject to high rates of erosion.”
Previously, some areas of Mt. Data have been fenced in a bid to protect the main sources of water and major tributaries of the Abra, Agno, and Chico rivers. While fencing was deemed an effective measure, the expansion of commercial vegetable farms proved to be overwhelming.
The same study revealed at least seven out of the 15 native mammals that once lived in Mt. Data have become extinct between 1895 and 1946 but extinction has continued up to the present.
Four species of native mammals found only in Mt. Data have gone extinct, according to the study.
Mt. Data hosted a joint expedition from the Philippine National Museum, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the US Army Medical Research Unit in 1946.
The expedition aimed to determine what specific mammals that caused the deaths of many US soldiers, who died of diseases carried by rat parasites during World War II.