DENR looks hell-bent on destroying nature
In May 2007 a Korean erected a resort-spa atop Taal Volcano, Batangas. The six-hectare excavation shocked Taal lakeshore residents and tourists. Unnatural, unsightly, unsafe. Unlawful too since national and local governments should ban public constructions during elections. Taal Volcano-island is a protected landscape.
Governor-elect Vilma Santos tried to halt the bulldozing. But the alien brandished an environment compliance certificate. Why the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources granted the EEC – and for how much bribe – was anybody’s guess. Only five years and two DENR secretaries later was the Korean’s adjoining floating restaurant padlocked.
Three years earlier, November 2004, mudslides and timber toppled concrete houses and shops in three mountainside towns in Quezon. DENR had allowed the illegal logging that killed 1,068 and maimed 1,061 residents; 500 were never found.
In 2013 DENR licensed three Chinese to extract nickel ore in two Zambales towns. Supposedly only small-scale miners used picks and shovels, when in truth 3,000 bulldozers and dump trucks leveled the mountains. With the reddish rocks, China illegally landfilled as airstrips three West Philippine Sea reefs.
In 2015 DENR twice awarded a nickel mine in Surigao that the Supreme Court had shut down seven years prior for forest encroachment.
In September 2023 a Senate inquiry exposed a religious cult in a Surigao mountaintop watershed. DENR had allowed the trespass into the protected area. The cult fenced off and built dormitories, canteens, chapels and guardhouses in 353 hectares.
Comes now another environment stunner. Advertised online is a multi-swimming pool resort in the middle of three of Bohol’s 1,776 famed Chocolate Hills. Netizens want to know why DENR allowed concrete cottages and other permanent structures seven months ago.
In the wake of public outrage, DENR orders an investigation by its provincial office – the very unit that permitted many other private picnic resorts. Chocolate Hills is one of the Philippines’ six National Geological Monuments. Consisting of corals pushed up from shallow sea two million years ago, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Nowhere else does DENR
