BAGUIO CITY – Pushing for a cleaner and greener environment, the City Environment and Parks Management Office (CEPMO) conducted a tree development and management seminar last week. Among those present were CEPMO head Cordellia Lacsamana and Forestry division head Beatriz Gajete, employees, barangay officials and concerned individuals.
With seminar and training venue at the CEPMO botanical park office, Forester Imelda Ngaloy discussed the factors for planting and caring for trees. Other topics discussed were seed collection, sources and selection, processing and storage. The factors to be considered were seed source maturity, storage, temperature, humidity, transplanting, tending, fertilization, and potting and planting media.
Prevention and protection from tree diseases such as infestation from molds, fungus, bacterial ooze, mildew were also clarified by the forester; as with tree surgery demonstration in several diseased trees in the vicinity.
Lacsamana in her message during the seminar cited an observation in a travel to an Asian country where a century-old forest was preserved within a highly-urbanized area. Said site is an eye-opener, she said, if it could be duplicated in the city.
Again, the importance of trees were pointed out, for food and building materials, vegetative cover, decorative purposes, for fuel, soil holder, cooling, shading, wildlife, water filtering material and Carbon Dioxide absorption. Trees’ release of Oxygen for human uses is also emphasized.
Other trainings and seminars for tree care, development and management are being scheduled. City parks are also being assessed in preparation for the tree-planting season this June.
By Julie G. Fianza