MALOLOS CITY—Bulacan Gov. Wilhelmino Alvarado has called for the amendment of forestry laws in the country.
This came in the wake of the Bulacan Provincial Anti-Illegal Logging Task Force (PAILTF) confiscation of over 5,000 board feet of illegally cut logs worth over P200,000 last week within the Angat Watershed.
”I will soon meet with Bulacan congressmen to discuss possible amendments in our forestry laws,” Alvarado said during his weekly radio program aired over Radyo Bulacan on Saturday.
He proposed that penalties imposed against arrested timber poachers be increased.
Based on a copy of the revised Presidential Decree 705 or the Forestry Reform Code of the Philippines “any person who shall cut, gather collect, remove timber or other forest products from any forest land or timber from alienable or disposable public land or from private land without the legal documents as required by existing laws and regulation shall be punished with the penalties under Articles 309 and 301 of the Revised Penal Code (RPC).
RPC Article 309 states that “any person guilty of theft shall be punished by the penalty of prision mayor in its minimum and medium periods, if the value of the thing stolen is more than 12,000 pesos but does not exceed 22,000 pesos.”
According to Alvarado, the said penalty is too light compared to effects of timber poaching on the environment especially on the watershed and affected communities downstream of the watershed.
The same was echoed by Mendel Garcia, the head of the Angat Watershed Area Team (AWAT) of the National Power Corporation (Napocor) which manages the Angat Dam and its watershed.
Garcia said that in the past, they arrested suspected timber poachers operating within the watershed, but after posting few thousands pesos in bail, they go free again.
Like Alvarado, Garcia said there is a need to revisit PD 705 which was issued in 1975 and amended in 1991.
For his part, Brother Martin Francisco of the Sagip Sierra Madre Environmental Society (SSMES) said “it is about time to re-amend the law.”
He said that penalties should be increased and that impacts of climate change aggravating continued deforestation be integrated.
Earlier this week, the PAILTF confiscated over 5,000 board feet of illegally cut logs from the Angat Watershed.
Garcia said that confiscated timbers were cut into flitches from at least 50 year old trees within the watershed.
The Angat Watershed is considered the most highly critical watershed in Luzon as it supplies 97 percent of Metro Manila’s daily potable water requirement.
