Greed and ancient trees

2008-12-04T16:42:00.000-08:00

When the Americans ran a Naval Base in Subic Bay, they went to a lot of trouble to protect this rare, triple canopied rain forest. Only 1 of two remaining in the entire Philippines. Piece by piece it's going to be going, going, gone for profit.

It seems that profit is more of an incentive to SBMA authorities than saving the last ra

re, virgin, triple canopy rain forest in the Philippines.

A Korean outfit has been given permission to cut 399 trees to put up a hotel and casino. To quote from an article HIDDEN AGENDA By Mary Ann Ll. Reyes - PhilStar

"The controversy involves a Korean hotel and casino project inside the Freeport zone in Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority which is threatening the existence of about 366 trees, mostly a century old and 30 of which are classified as endangered."

Not only that, Crown Peak Corporation was given permission to cut 799 trees with the same classification. The ecology department was quoted as saying the trees were merely trimmed.

How are we going to protect one of our last virgin rain forest if this keeps happening?

These are not small trees as purported by SBMA ecology department. Many of the trees topped by Crown Peak took 20 or more years to grow. Topping of this type of tree normally destroys the tree, plus now the tree trunks left are an eyesore...and when and if they do grow back, they will most likely have to keep topping them to regain the view! Isn't this an excerise in futility? They might as well have gone ahead and cut the trees altogether.

Before the trees were "topped"you could not even tell there was a view of Subic Bay the trees were so thick, but in order to get a view for the new condos being built..they "topped the trees".

Subic Freeport

Greed and ancient trees