{"id":145183,"date":"2018-01-10T07:07:31","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T12:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=145183"},"modified":"2018-01-10T07:07:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T12:07:31","slug":"duterte-orders-denr-to-suspend-illegal-logging-firms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/10\/duterte-orders-denr-to-suspend-illegal-logging-firms\/","title":{"rendered":"Duterte orders DENR to suspend illegal logging firms"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE:<\/a>
FILE: President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (ROBINSON NI\u00d1AL JR.\/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA, Philippines \u2014 President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to suspend illegal logging operations in Zamboanga Peninsula following reports and images of the massive forest denudation in the region.<\/p>\n

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said Duterte came to this decision during the Cabinet meeting on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe President also ordered several logging concessions in Zamboanga Peninsula to be suspended. This after he was apprised of concerns of indigenous populations that they have been displaced by logging operations of some companies,\u201d Roque said in a press briefing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd also observed that it is widespread logging that is responsible for the flashfloods that Mindanao experienced only this month of December with two typhoons,\u201d Roque added.<\/p>\n

Agriculture Secretary Manny Pi\u00f1ol said in a Facebook post that Duterte was \u201cangry\u201d when he instructed Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu after he watched a five-minute video presentation of the \u201cdeforested\u201d portion of the Zamboanga mountain range.<\/p>\n

Authorities blamed heavy\u00a0flooding after the height of typhoons Urduja and Vinta on the destruction of forests, particularly in Zamboanga peninsula.<\/p>\n

Duterte\u2019s order came out to suspend the contracts of at least two logging companies.<\/p>\n

Pi\u00f1ol named Sodaco Agricultural Corp. as one of the firms, which supposedly got a 60,000-hectare permit from the DENR in 2006.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgriculture and fisheries were adversely affected by the flooding and landslides. Even if you have the ISF (integrated social forestry) license, it does not give you the right to cut down trees for commercial purposes. They made the ISF as an excuse to conduct logging operations,\u201d Pi\u00f1ol told reporters.<\/p>\n

DENR regional director Felix Mirasol Jr. confirmed the suspension order on Sodaco and sister company Sirawai Plywood & Lumber Corp. (SPLC) in Sibuco, which is under the Dacon Group of Companies (DGC) and mother company DMCI, for the breach in their Industrial Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) with the government.<\/p>\n

Cimatu said that he assigned DENR investigators in the province and vowed to conduct an \u201cexhaustive\u201d investigation to see if there are violations in the permits.<\/p>\n

Cimatu added they created a 12-member team consisting of local DENR officers from the forestry, mines and environment bureaus to look into possible offenses in the operations of Sodaco and SPLC.<\/p>\n

The DENR has issued five IFMAs to the two firms with a combined area of 70,709 hectares, covering 12 towns crossing the boundaries of Zamboanga del Norte and Zamboanga del Sur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA, Philippines \u2014 President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to suspend illegal logging operations …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":139051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,95],"tags":[42631,42633,28567,42632,42630,13135,31449,42635,42634,38634],"class_list":["post-145183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-agriculture-secretary-manny-pinol","tag-denr-regional-director-felix-mirasol-jr","tag-department-of-environment-and-natural-resources-denr","tag-environment-secretary-roy-cimatu","tag-logging-operations","tag-president-rodrigo-duterte","tag-presidential-spokesperson-harry-roque","tag-sirawai-plywood-lumber-corp-splc","tag-sodaco-agricultural-corp","tag-zamboanga-peninsula","mauthors-carlo-jacob-molina","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}