Baguio City groups engage in tree planting activities

By Redjie Melvic M. Cawis

Saturday 15th of September 2012

BAGUIO CITY, Sept 15 (PIA) -- More groups in Baguio City and Benguet are engaging in tree planting activities.

News reporters and staff of the ABS-CBN TV3 Baguio planted 500 pine and callandra tree seedlings at the Puguis Communal Forest in La Trinidad, Benguet last week.

ABS-CBN Baguio Station Manager Bernie Aldana said that they have planted trees in a 250,000-square meter area of the forest reserve area in Puguis, which they have adopted as their forest land area.

Aldana said that the tree planting event is an advocacy of ABS-CBN, which are the front liners of news and public affairs, particularly on environment and disasters. He said that the activity is one way of helping to restore and re-green the remaining forest areas in the province of Benguet.

Meanwhile, the Watwatworld community, an online group and the Development of Ethnic Cultural Arts and Traditions (Decat), a non-government organization, conducted their second phase of their tree planting project at the Longlong Communal Forest in La Trinidad, Benguet.

Around 200 participants joined the activity, planting more than 500 pine and callandra trees.

Watwatworld community and the Decat have organized the “One Nature One Community (ONOC),” which aims to encourage different schools, organizations and other groups in Baguio City and Benguet to plant trees and adopt a forest to nurture and to take care.

Decat President Dean Cuanso said they have already planted some 1,000 trees in Puguis and these are being sustained by members of the non-government organization.

Cuanso said that a third ONOC tree planting event is tentatively scheduled next month at the Shilan Communal Forest, also in La Trinidad.

He is inviting different organizations, especially youth groups, to join the advocacy and start caring for the environment in their own simple way. (JDP/RC-PIA CAR)