Real-life hero: Higaonon chieftain fights fire in his lonesome to save young trees
OPOL, Misamis Oriental (MindaNews / 17 June) – A trek to the mountainous part of Barangay Awang in Opol, Misamis Oriental when the sun is already high up in the sky could be punishing without any head cover. It’s just about two kilometers from the road at the village proper, but the place is denuded, there are no trees along the trail to shield the body from the heat.
The only refreshing sight along the way is the rocky Awang Creek that drains into the Iponan River, the natural boundary between the town and bustling Cagayan de Oro City.
But thanks to the collective initiative of the local Higaonon community, private groups and companies, the municipal government and other stakeholders, the denuded forest is undergoing restoration using indigenous tree species.
Unfortunately, on April 14 this year, a fire coming from an adjacent farm reached one of the mountain peaks already planted to trees. The blaze lasted from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and burned around five hectares of the planted area. Yet, if not for the solitary effort of Datu Mancalamag Marcos Nabatlao, a Higaonon tribal chieftain, the fire could have spread over a wider area.
Datu Mancalamag said he was the only one who tried to suppress the fire until his grandchildren John Paul and Mimi arrived around 3 p.m. to help him.
“I only used banana shoots, beating the burning weeds with it. Whenever I got tired of beating I’d use the sprayer filled with water. It was so hot and tiring, I tumbled down several times due to exhaustion,” he narrated.
By 2 p.m., he thought he had stopped the fire. However, at 3 p.m. he noticed that the area was again burning. After a hurried meal with his grandchildren who had just arrived, they again went out to suppress the fire. “Around 400 trees were burned, but I think some will survive,” he said.
Datu Mancalamag said he believes that the person who started the fire had no intention to burn the juvenile trees. Still, he added, that person should have thought of the possible consequences as well as the fact that several groups and individuals are involved in the project. “Aside from Samdhana and the private groups and companies, my grandchildren and students from Opol also helped. It’s useless if I can’t defend their effort.”
Destroyed by mining
Decades ago, Awang, which is part of the Dulangan Unified Ancestral Domain, was anything but a barren landscape. “This was a forest before, full of trees. I remember that during my younger days there were plenty of wild pigs, monkeys, and hornbills here,” Datu Mancalamag recounted.
Datu Mancalamag, who has lived in Awang since childhood with his parents, recalled that their tribe was the first to inhabit the area. “We had everything we needed. The forest gave us food. We also got fish from the creeks and rivers near us.”
But all that changed after mining companies came to extract chromite. He said that since 1977, seven firms took turns mining the area. Logging made the situation worse. The last mining company, a Chinese-owned one, left in 2015. By then, the area had been totally denuded.
The datu also recalled that settlers started coming in with the entry of mining operations. Some of them were able to buy lands in the tribe’s ancestral domain.
As time went by, realizing that their land could no longer grow crops for their sustenance, many members of the tribe moved to other villages where land was still fertile. Datu Mancalamag and a few others chose to remain.
“Coconut and cassava would still thrive in some areas here,” he said. “We will plant trees in areas where crops will no longer grow. We may no longer be able to bring the forest back to its original state, but at least, we’ll have something as defense in case mining would attempt to return,” he said.
20@20
Tree planting in the Higaonon ancestral domain, which is envisaged to be a watershed, started in 2019 with support from Samdhana, whose partnership with the tribe started in 2017. Private companies, women’s groups, church-based and nongovernment organizations, the parish church in Barangay Barra (Opol), the barangay and municipal government, and students from Opol, as well as, from Xavier University and University of Science and Technology in Southern Philippines are also participating in the tree-growing project.
Datu Mancalamag was elated that even some seedlings that were planted in rocky portions managed to survive. He estimated that around 8,000 seedlings have survived since the tree planting project started in 2019. These included tugas, narra, olayan (oak) and other hardwood species. “Quite an amount is involved here if we’re going to quantify this,” he said.
Aside from the ecological benefits of restoring the forest in Awang, the tree-growing project will also help preserve the community’s water source, which has been tapped for the installation of a water system to give the residents easier access to clean water. The source, a spring, flows from the eastern side of the mountain that was hit by the fire on April 14. Samdhana obtained support from Global Greengrants Fund for the water system project.
Datu Mancalamag said he is just thankful that the source has never dried up even if the area is already denuded. “There are times that the volume of water coming from it would decrease, but it has never dried up,” he noted.
Realizing the significance of the project to the protection of water sources and climate change mitigation, the tribal leader urged other indigenous communities to also rehabilitate their denuded forests.
For its part, Samdhana launched in February this year 20@20, which aims to support at least 20 indigenous and local communities to achieve the target of planting 20,000 trees in 20 hectares. The project launch, which took place in Awang, is part of the institute’s celebration of its 20th founding anniversary.
On Earth Day, April 22, Samdhana staffers and volunteers returned to Awang to plant more narra seedlings. A convoy of volunteers from Cagayan de Oro also went there the next day for the same purpose. (H. Marcos C. Mordeno/MindaNews)
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