BAUKO, Mountain Province – Mayor Abraham B. Akilit expressed his gratitude to the leadership of the Cordillera office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR-CAR) for not objecting to the earlier proposal of the municipal government and the agriculture department to put up a road system within the 3,00-hectare Cada area to boost the speedy transport of agricultural crops from the farms to the market with lesser transportation expenses.
The local chief executive said the certificate of no objection issued by the DENR-CAR to the construction of the Cada road system is a breakthrough in the efforts of the local government and the DA to include the put up of the road to be funded under the agency’s Philippine Rural Development Program (PRDP).
However, the DENR-CAR stipulated that the road project proponents must first secure from the concerned agency environmental compliance certificate (ECC) to ensure the sustained preservation and protection of the state of the environment in the area.
“WE have to sustain our earlier proposal that the road system to be built within the Cada area will be limited so that there will be available buffer zones where agro-forestry shrubs will be planted to serve as wind breaker and sustain efforts to sustain and enhance the preservation of the environment,” Akilit stressed.
He added the construction of the Cada road system has been the clamor of thousands of farmers who are cultivating most of the areas within the Mount Data forest reservation as vegetable farms that serve as the major source of their livelihood.
According to him, the introduction of agro-forestry interventions within identified buffer zones and stream ways among others would help in enhancing the state of the environment in the area, especially in serving as a wind breaker and sustain the availability of water supply for the vegetable farms that are situated within the plateau.
He said farmers in the area must continue their commitment to help improve the state of the environment in the area so that the present and future generations will benefit from existing environmental preservation and protection efforts among others.
Akilit cited the municipal government is making representations with concerned government agencies in order to make sure that there will be significant improvements in the local road system which will ensure the immediate transport of agricultural crops from the farms to the market with lesser transportation expenses on the part of the farmers.
The municipal mayor asserted that farmers must also do their part in contributing to the improvement of the state of the environment because it will be their children and their children’s children who will directly benefit from the better state of the forest reservation.
Bauko is one of the vegetable-producing municipalities in Mountain Province that greatly contribute in the abundant supply of highland vegetables being shipped to the different markets in the lowlands and Metro Manila.
By Dexter A. See
