TARLAC CITY—The province of Tarlac, the top performer in the government’s National Greening Program (NGP) in Central Luzon, planted trees on more than 18,600 hectares of land over a six-year period, besting six other provinces in the region.
Ronilo Salac, regional NGP coordinator for Central Luzon, said 18,668.9 hectares have been planted in 288 sites in the province since 2011, accounting for roughly 20 percent of the 94,658.25 hectares in 2,131 sites in the region over the period.
When the NGP was launched in 2011, only 936 hectares were added to Tarlac’s forest cover. These increased to 2,736 has in 2012; 4,306 in 2013; 3,259 in 2014; 4,863.27 in 2015 and 2,568.67 this year.
Tarlac was followed by Nueva Ecija with 17,052.87 hectares planted, Zambales (15,814.55 has), Bulacan (13,7.36 has), Aurora (11,606.4 has), Bataan (10,567.38 has) and Pampanga (7,100.75 has).
In terms of NGP sites, Nueva Ecija utilized the most with 485 sites followed by Bataan (371), Aurora (339),Tarlac (288), Bulacan (234), Zambales (223) and Pampanga (191).
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that the country increased its forest area to 240,000 hectares per year from 2010 to 2015, enough for it to rank fifth behind China, with a forest area gain of 1.5 million hectares, Australia (308,000 hectares), Chile (301,000 hectares) and the United States (275,000 hectares).
The country ranked ahead of Gabon, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, India, Vietnam and France.
The DENR launched the NGP in 2011 to reforest some 1.5 million hectares of open, denuded and degraded land nationwide.