CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – It’s a Friday night like no other.
For one, the concert on Deng Lingat’s Kalinangan Telasbastagan here was far from ordinary. It gathered the most passionate of artists and environmentalists in Pampanga.
For another, they picked up a difficult but worthy cause: Save 1,211 trees on the Apalit-City of San Fernando portions of the MacArthur Highway, also known as the Manila North Road.
The trees are among the 5,442 trees that the Department of Public Works and Highways has scheduled to cut in Pampanga and Tarlac to give way to more lanes on the highway to ease traffic there.
Environment Secretary Lito Atienza issued a permit on April 22. The DPWH received it on May 26.
With the permit lasting for 120 days, green advocate Cecile Yumul has stormed the heavens with prayers, hoping the permit would lapse and not be renewed.
Members of the Alaya Chamber of the Arts won’t leave it up to chances.
TREE HUGGERS
On Thursday night, Alaya artists put their brushes to work, creeping into the Balite and Telabastagan segments to draw human figures on some 100 trees there.
More than protest sign, the drawings made it looked from afar that people are hugging the trees to protect these.
Alaya members have run out of supplies, calling for donations of paints to be able to mark more trees with the protest symbol, Yumul said. [Call or text her 09189143347 in case you want to give paints and brushes.]
There’s rush. At least 82 trees had been felled as of Friday, according to one of the concert’s organizers, Ching Pangilinan.
Even for that, a tarpaulin in the concert dubbed the tree-cutting as “MacArthur Highway massacre.”
For the trees, concert-goers also braved the strong rains of tropical storm Isang and skipped hours of sleep to voice out their stand.
ARMY OF ARTISTS FOR NATURE
“Save the trees!” Dino Dollente of the band Grassroots boomed from the mike.
The audience, mostly youth, clapped loud, queing up also as they signed a petition asking the DPWH and DENR to back out from the plan.
Through songs, Etniktronika, Notes and Rhythms, Ara Muna, Gary Salas, Sining Kapampangan, Friday Prayers, Discrepancies, Bin Bondoc and Five Against the Wall nailed their solidarity with Mother Nature.
Poet Frank Guintu read Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” with his own Kapampangan translation, his version more moving.
Yumul said the trees and the MacArthur Highway should be spared because the North Luzon Expressway, Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway and the FVR Megadike have provided alternative routes to and from Pampanga.
The trees served as temporary homes to evacuees escaping the fury of Mt. Pinatubo’s eruptions in 1991, she recalled.
Rescue volunteers used the treetops as guides when the route was darkened by the ash and sand spewed by the volcano, Yumul added.
The oxygen that the trees emit and their absorption of water make them all the more important in flood-prone and highly urbanizing Pampanga, Yumul further said.
Traffic management, she pointed out, was a matter of enforcement by the DPWH, Land Transportation Office and local governments.
“Why should they sacrifice the trees if they fail to do their jobs?” Yumul said.
The trees are also part of Pampanga heritage, said Pangilinan.
A dirt road before the American era, it has been lined with trees when Eusebius Julius Halsema was district engineer of Pampanga from 1914 to 1916, she said.
From painting protest sign to singing for Mother Nature, Yumul said the green army of artists will take the campaign far and wide to, hopefully, convince the DENR and DPWH to leave the trees alone and make them live longer for people than for business.
For one, the concert on Deng Lingat’s Kalinangan Telasbastagan here was far from ordinary. It gathered the most passionate of artists and environmentalists in Pampanga.
For another, they picked up a difficult but worthy cause: Save 1,211 trees on the Apalit-City of San Fernando portions of the MacArthur Highway, also known as the Manila North Road.
The trees are among the 5,442 trees that the Department of Public Works and Highways has scheduled to cut in Pampanga and Tarlac to give way to more lanes on the highway to ease traffic there.
Environment Secretary Lito Atienza issued a permit on April 22. The DPWH received it on May 26.
With the permit lasting for 120 days, green advocate Cecile Yumul has stormed the heavens with prayers, hoping the permit would lapse and not be renewed.
Members of the Alaya Chamber of the Arts won’t leave it up to chances.
TREE HUGGERS
On Thursday night, Alaya artists put their brushes to work, creeping into the Balite and Telabastagan segments to draw human figures on some 100 trees there.
More than protest sign, the drawings made it looked from afar that people are hugging the trees to protect these.
Alaya members have run out of supplies, calling for donations of paints to be able to mark more trees with the protest symbol, Yumul said. [Call or text her 09189143347 in case you want to give paints and brushes.]
There’s rush. At least 82 trees had been felled as of Friday, according to one of the concert’s organizers, Ching Pangilinan.
Even for that, a tarpaulin in the concert dubbed the tree-cutting as “MacArthur Highway massacre.”
For the trees, concert-goers also braved the strong rains of tropical storm Isang and skipped hours of sleep to voice out their stand.
ARMY OF ARTISTS FOR NATURE
“Save the trees!” Dino Dollente of the band Grassroots boomed from the mike.
The audience, mostly youth, clapped loud, queing up also as they signed a petition asking the DPWH and DENR to back out from the plan.
Through songs, Etniktronika, Notes and Rhythms, Ara Muna, Gary Salas, Sining Kapampangan, Friday Prayers, Discrepancies, Bin Bondoc and Five Against the Wall nailed their solidarity with Mother Nature.
Poet Frank Guintu read Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” with his own Kapampangan translation, his version more moving.
Yumul said the trees and the MacArthur Highway should be spared because the North Luzon Expressway, Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway and the FVR Megadike have provided alternative routes to and from Pampanga.
The trees served as temporary homes to evacuees escaping the fury of Mt. Pinatubo’s eruptions in 1991, she recalled.
Rescue volunteers used the treetops as guides when the route was darkened by the ash and sand spewed by the volcano, Yumul added.
The oxygen that the trees emit and their absorption of water make them all the more important in flood-prone and highly urbanizing Pampanga, Yumul further said.
Traffic management, she pointed out, was a matter of enforcement by the DPWH, Land Transportation Office and local governments.
“Why should they sacrifice the trees if they fail to do their jobs?” Yumul said.
The trees are also part of Pampanga heritage, said Pangilinan.
A dirt road before the American era, it has been lined with trees when Eusebius Julius Halsema was district engineer of Pampanga from 1914 to 1916, she said.
From painting protest sign to singing for Mother Nature, Yumul said the green army of artists will take the campaign far and wide to, hopefully, convince the DENR and DPWH to leave the trees alone and make them live longer for people than for business.
