President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the Environment department to suspend the operations of several logging concessions in the Zamboanga Peninsula, as deforestation was blamed for the flash floods and mudslides there last month, the Palace said Tuesday.
“This after [the President] was apprised of concerns of indigenous populations that they have been displaced by logging operations of some companies,” Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said in a Palace news briefing.
“[The President] also observed that it is widespread logging that is responsible for the flash floods that Mindanao experienced only this month of December with two typhoons,” Roque added.
In a Facebook post following the monthly Cabinet meeting on Monday night, Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol quoted the President as telling Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu to “implement a closure order” against the Sodaco Agricultural Corp., which holds a 60,000-hectare concession under the DENR’s Integrated Social Forestry program.
DENR regional director Felix Mirasol Jr. said the two industrial forest management agreement suspension orders were served on Dacon Group of Companies through its companies, the South Davao Development Co. Inc and Sirawai Plywood & Lumber Corp. in Sibuco town.
A 12-member investigator team, composed of local DENR officers from the forestry, mines and environment bureaus, have been deployed so that “an exhaustive probe can be conducted to see if there have been violations in their permits,” Cimatu said.
“Roy, ipasara mo yan. Hindi naman maghihirap yan si Consunji kasi Oligarch na yan [Roy, order it closed. Consunji isn’t getting poorer because he’s an oligarch already],” the President told the Environment Secretary, referring to the billionaire family that owns Sodaco.
Also in his recent talks with Cimatu, Piñol said the DENR chief has already ordered an immediate investigation into the reported logging operations by the company owned by the Consunji group.
“I have formed a team to investigate not only what Sodaco did in the Zamboanga but also in the Kalamansig-Lebak mountains,” Cimatu was quoted as telling Piñol.
Piñol, who recently conducted a helicopter fly-over on the portion of the mountains that have been deforested, said the logging operation “is blamed for the flash floods and mudslides which killed dozens of people and damaged agricultural lands in four towns of Zamboanga del Norte Dec. 22 at the height of Typhoon ‘Vinta.’”
The President also promised to aid fisher folk families in Barangay Anubgan, Sibuco town, whose homes were swept to sea when flash floods brought down logs that rampaged through the isolated coastal community, Piñol said.
Duterte watched a five-minute video of the deforested portion of the Zamboanga mountain range where the flash floods brought down the logs, Cimatu said.
Under their IFMA terms, SPLC and Sodaco are allowed to establish industrial tree plantations from which they can harvest, but are not allowed to cut residual trees unless authorized by Cimatu under very strict conditions, such as site development and plantation establishment.
DENR had issued five IFMAs to the two firms with a combined area of 70,709 hectares covering 12 towns traversing the boundaries of Zamboanga del Norte and del Sur.