New forest helps save villages - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos
New forest helps save villages
By Tessa Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:36:00 11/02/2009
MANILA, Philippines—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 Peñablanca 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.
A once barren mountainside is now dotted with more than 18,000 mango trees and 680,000 other indigenous forest trees.
Though almost all of the trees are still barely above seven feet high, conservationists say they are already big and numerous enough to help hold rain water and trap sediments.
daghan kaayo trees sa camp lapulapu. i hope dili pamutlon.