(Photo by: DENR)
TACLOBAN CITY – The illegal cutting of trees in the first district of Northern Samar has declined to a negligible level.
Thus declared Rep. Paul Daza of the first congressional district of the province in a mobile phone interview with Leyte Samar Daily Express said that the series of operations conducted by the authorities on the timber poaching in the early part of this year have resulted to the decline of the illegal cutting of trees in his district.
Rep. Daza said that the efforts and accomplishments of the law enforcers to stop the illegal cutting of trees in his district is commendable as he declared that one of his advocacies is the protection and conservation of the environment.
The solon explained that in his advocacy for the protection and conservation of the environment, he just wants to protect the people in his district from floods and landslides and other devastations brought about by calamities which are blamed on environmental destruction and degradation.
It was learned that the intermittent timber poaching in the first district of Northern Samar has been going on for years now.
Records at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources regional office 8 (DENR-8) based in Tacloban City disclosed that the series of operations conducted by the authorities from the month of April, 2020 to early part of this month of June has resulted to the confiscation of more than 165,000 board feet of assorted sizes of lumber with an estimated value of P8.4 million in the municipality of San Isidro and its nearby areas.
Daza said that residents in his district have blamed rampant illegal cutting of trees for the massive flooding during typhoons for the past years resulting in deaths and agricultural destruction in the province of Northern Samar.
It can be recalled that the House of Representatives has conducted an investigation last January 2019 on the reported rampant illegal logging in the provinces of Samar and Northern Samar.
The illegal cutting of trees was blamed on the massive flooding and landslides at the height of Typhoon ‘Usman’ on December 28, 2018.
There were eight people who died in Northern Samar and five people in Samar during the fury of Usman.
(RESTITUTO A. CAYUBIT)
