NegOr exceeds seedlings requirement for this year’s NGP

By Rachelle M. Nessia

Saturday 9th of June 2012

DUMAGUETE CITY, June 9 (PIA) -- The province of Negros Oriental have already surpassed the seedling requirement set by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for this year.

DENR set a 1.3 million seedling target for Negros Oriental for 2012.

To date, the province has already prepared about 1.9 million seedlings ready for planting in its National Greening Program (NGP) sites.

“This involves a total budget of about P18 million involving 30 people’s organizations here,” DENR Region 7 executive director Maximo Dichoso said about the massive undertaking.

The seedlings will be planted in the province’s target area of 2,619 hectares for this year, which is double than the 1,900 hectares set by DENR for the province last year.

The seedlings are from the more than 100 mother trees that were marked in the province’s seed production areas.

“We are ensuring that the seedlings being produced for our NGP planting must come from these mother trees in order to have high quality planting materials,” said Dichoso.

NGP’s national target last year was 100,000 hectares, and the number is hiked to 200,000 hectares this year.

Negros Oriental’s total land area covers 540,203 hectares, of which only 5.6 percent or 30,000 hectares are existing natural forest cover.

About 4.9 percent or 22,085 hectares of the total land area are plantation forest and man-made forest areas.

President Benigno Aquino III declared NGP as a government priority in Executive Order No. 26 with the goal of planting some 1.5 billion trees in about 1.5 million hectares across the country from 2011 to 2016. (RMN-PIA 7, Negros Oriental)