Planting of rubber trees pushed in the Philippines

ERJ staff report (TP)

Davao, the Philippines – The Department of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR) in the Davao Region is eyeing to make the rubber tree as the banner species for the agency's reforestation program, reported Reuel John F. Lumawag for Sun Star.

DENR Regional Executive Director Joselin Marcus E. Fragada said: "For this year, we have targeted to plant some eight million seedlings of different trees, like cacao, coffee, and rubber in 16,800 hectares of land. The rubber tree is the most-asked seedling from us because of the livelihood it can provide and with that, we are trying to make it as the banner species for the region.”

For instance, he said, this will truly benefit the locals of Compostella Valley (Comval) and Davao Oriental (Davor) who were affected by Typhoon Pablo in 2012.

"I have proposed to Governor Arturo T. Uy of Compostella Valley and Governor Corazon N. Malanyaon of Davao Oriental to establish more plantations of rubber because it will provide livelihoods for the people who have lost their livelihoods due to the typhoon," he said.

In 2012, a total of 3,399,195 rubber seedlings were planted nationwide making it the fourth most planted species in the National Greening Program’s (NGP) commodity roadmap.

According to NGP, the "primary uses for rubber products are found in the automotive, mining, agriculture, shipping, chemicals, pharmaceutical, and consumer industries."

As of 15 November, DENR has already planted some 8.4m seedlings of various species in 16,707 hectares of land.

The NGP of DENR targets to plant some 1.5bn trees covering 1.5m hectares of land from 2011 to 2016 in the Philippines. For this year, they have already planted 267,077 hectares of land or 149m seedlings throughout the country.

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Full story from Sun Star