DENR activates nationwide forest pest alert system

DENR Bicol Regional Executive Director Gilbert Gonzales urges stakeholders and forestry extension officers to guard the forest against illegal logging activities and pests. This was made in the wake of a community-based forest protection and integrated pest management workshop held at the DENR Regional Office. He cited newly established tree plantation under the National Greening Program (NGP) to be included in the pest monitoring activity.
(Photo by Jessel S. Basanta)

Aside from illegal loggers, a new enemy has been added to the order of battle issued to government forest guards -- malevolent forest fungi and insect, or collectively known as forest pests.

Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Ramon J. P. Paje has recently tasked forest guards to be on the look-out for signs of forest pest damage due to insect or fungi infestation while doing their forest surveillance duties.

“The gains we have posted thus far in the National Greening Program (NGP) has prompted a wide range of responses to include hiring of more forest guards and ensuring the efficiency in monitoring the health of our forests through the activation of an early-warning-surveillance systems against incidence or potential outbreaks of pest infestation in our forests,” Paje said, reiterating that NGP’s target of covering 1.5 million hectares by 2016 is to grow healthy trees and not just to mere plant seedlings.

In issuing DENR Administrative Order (DAO) 2012-05, Paje ordered “every Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) with forests under its jurisdiction” to designate a Forest Surveillance and Monitoring Officer (FPSMO).
“The FPSMO shall conduct regular forest inspection activities in his/ her area of jurisdiction, and coordinate with the forest tenure holders, private plantation owners, protected area supervisors, or indigenous peoples (IP) groups, and local communities,” Paje noted in the order.

Paje said that the forest-pest-watch duties of the forest guards forms part of the CENRO’s regular forest protection activities “with or without infestation.”
The administrative order likewise provides for a set of guidelines to carry out a forest pest response mechanism involving concerned Regional Executive Director (RED), Provincial Environment and Resources Officer (PENRO) and CENR Officer.

Under the guidelines, an ad hoc Forest Pest Assessment Team (FPAT) is to be formed upon the recommendation of the concerned RED to the DENR central office with notification to the directors of the Forest Management Bureau (FMB) and the Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau (ERDB), including that of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB) if the infestation is within a protected area.

Salient in the FPAT’s tasks is to design a blueprint of action “to totally eliminate the pest and prevent similar incidence” and to determine the success or failure of the control measures undertaken in an affected area through periodic evaluation.
Also covered in the order is the pest surveillance of forest within ancestral domains where indigenous peoples leaders are to be coordinated closely with by the concerned CENRO with the aim of involving the leaders in the undertaking through a memorandum of agreement detailing the specific courses of action to address the pest problem.

In 1985, a forest pest called “jumping lice” (Leucaena psyllids), wrought havoc in ipil-ipil tree (Leucaena Leucocephala) plantations in the uplands covered by the DENR’s Community-Based Forestry Program (CBFM) to the point that a moratorium in the planting of the species was recommended, except for research, until seeds of resistant varieties became available.

Other forest pests that have been recorded to have infected trees thriving in the Philippine forests include the beehole borer that attack the acacia, yemane and gmelina arborea; the six-spined engraver beetle or ipis beetle which feed on the Benguet pine; shoot Borer on Mahogany; varicose borer on bagras; and teak defoliator and teak skeletonizer on teak.