SAN FERNANDO CITY, Pampanga — Operatives of Task Force Sagip Kalikasan of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) seized some 16,000 board feet of narra lumber worth at least R1.5 million despite strong resistance by furniture makers in Betis, Guagua town, environment authorities reported yesterday
Regidor de Leon, executive director of the DENR office in Central Luzon, said hundreds of irate workers belonging to the Sta. Clara Multipurpose Cooperative established a human barricade at the entrance of a furniture warehouse to prevent the raiding team from confiscating some 16,000 board feet of squared narra lumber owned by them and a certain "Chris David."
David and the cooperative failed to present valid transport documents and certificates of lumber origin. Documents initially show that the forest products were to be delivered to a consignee in Quezon City.
The "hot logs" were believed to have come from the forest of Tabuk, Kalinga.
Ricardo Calderon, DENR technical director for forestry, said the furniture workers even set up two owner-type jeeps, old tires, and three truckloads of sand at the entrance of the warehouse to block three six-wheel trucks commissioned by the DENR to haul the lumber.
The DENR team was able to haul away the forest products a day after the raid and only after tactical negotiation was conducted by Central Luzon police director Chief Supt. Rowland Albano, Guagua Vice Mayor Ricardo Rivera, and Guagua police chief Inspector Roque Paredez who led the local police in providing security backup.
The seizure came on the heels of an intensified anti-illegal logging campaign in Central Luzon which calls for discouraging demand and market outlets for hot logs, and the prosecution of forest saboteurs and their financiers.
The raiding team was composed of operatives from the DENR field offices and Task Force Sagip Kalikasan headed by retired Army Maj. Gen. Alfonso Dagudag who was commissioned by President Arroyo to lead the government crackdown on illegal logging following the Aurora and Quezon landslides late last year.
The barricade was reminiscent of the "mob power" employed by illegal loggers in Nueva Ecija, where thousands of men, women, and children in four illegal logging "hot spots" in General Tinio town formed a human barricade to prevent joint DENR and Army operatives from confiscating the forest products.
