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New forest helps save villages
"There were areas here that used to be barren due to slash-and-burn farming (kaingin), but now that there is vegetation and grass, the siltation in rivers and creeks has been avoided."
- Tito Mangantulao, local environmental official
Over the past month, typhoons “Pepeng” and “Ramil” lashed northern Luzon, but residents of a town in Cagayan province are thanking their young trees for sparing their place from killer landslides that buried villages in other mountainside communities.
A 2,500-hectare reforestation project in Penablanca town has absorbed excess rainwater and trapped soil sediments, preventing soil runoff and erosion, the prerequisites to landslides, according to the local government and conservationists.