Reforest and rewild

I had the good fortune of meeting two passionate tree lovers in the persons of Eugene Strong and Alvin Orbecido, who both work with the local government of Isabela City, Basilan province.

They handle the Isabela City Forest Park under a joint management agreement with Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Region 9. It is interesting that Isabela City is in Basilan but it is not part of BARMM. Rather, it is a part of Region IX along with Zamboanga peninsula.

I met them on the occasion of our tree planting activity, starting with 13,000 coffee seedlings to be planted this year under our Philippine Coffee Board Inc. (PCBI) and Isabela City Memorandum of Agreement (MOA).

The intermittent rains did not stop us from visiting the seedling nursery in Maligui, Isabela City as we walked under centennial trees, and over a bridge with a stream of gushing rain water underneath us. Though they have old mahogany trees, they also had old endemic varieties like the famous Basilan yakan, now endangered, and lauan (red and white), narra and prickly narra.

They propagate seedlings of these old tree varieties along with Robusta and Excelsa coffee varieties. Mr. Strong has promised to target having as many as 50,000 coffee seedlings up to next year, in line with our commitment to plant over 200,000 trees around the country.

The other observation we made at the Forest Park was the staff of Mr. Alvin – they were all women foresters! They gingerly put names and labels on the seedlings we asked for and made us sign our names on a logbook as we planted our own “legacy” trees in the park. Alvin says the male applicants prefer to work elsewhere, not in this forest park, though it is located just half hour from the city proper.

The lady foresters are on the job, potting seeds of the native trees and guiding us around the nursery. Kudos to these women tree huggers! They are graduates of Western Mindanao State University where Forestry seems to be a popular course.

It was a good afternoon spent under forest cover and learning about different species like the balete or banyan, a most popular tree due to legends about ghosts and other supernaturals that supposedly love its cool