Join IP Children & Elders Replant 1000 Trees

Surviving through the scorching heat, outplanted seedlings are getting sturdier being climatically assuaged by the night time mountain cool breeze.   Majority have taken root and nutritionally growing thus capturing the first hectare sanctuary target coverage.   Community members beamed with pride having hurdled and achieved the difficult tasks of revitalizing scathed patches of their precious watershed. Definitely, it’s still a long way to go but there’s no better time to plant than today.

Once again, the young and elderly members of the community do the usual chore of looking for sprouting endemic seedlings, bagged them  to be nurtured in the nursery in preparation for outplanting.  Following their customary law of “Lapat” in  protecting the forest, families took turns in fulfilling their part of planting seedlings and similarly taking care of these.  The ideal is avoid seedling mortality as much as possible so as to attain a higher rate survival.

The much able menfolks are sticking lines and mapping out areas as guides for the planting.  Some areas identified for planting are cleared a bit from bushes and shrubs to prevent nutrient competition so that the growing seedlings would have all the nutrients to themselves.

Regular meetings and assemblies are also done by the community to assess the progress of the work, identify and resolve problem areas.  One of the challenges identified is the now extended long drought periods with temperatures hitting 30-40 degrees Celcius which is really hot under Philippine Standards.  Another threat is forest fire.  Luckily within the period, no forest fire has occurred as this will wipe all and bring to naught all the painstaking  reforestation work  invested by the community.

In two months time, the community will have to maximize the onset of the rainy season which hopefully would start by May.  There will be a greater chance of survival of seedlings around this time.  This means capturing the next hectare would be highly doable given the inspiration outflowing from the success of the first one hectare covered. 

Again it is with deep gratitude that we are extending our thanks to all of you who have become part of this big task.  Just like in the previous report where the damage of a strong typhoon was greatly minimized because of the still forested Sierra Madre Mountain range that filtered the strong typhoon  wind blows.  The community has become convinced more than ever that   regrowing the forest is like building a formidable phalanx of wind breakers that will save them from future typhoon ravages.

Hopefully in the next report, we can update the progress of the continuous planting activity.  Thank you for your contributions that consolidated together would greatly cover some of the needed expenses even as basic as food snacks and water for those engage in planting activities. 

Thank you once again!