Reforestation project announced for Negros Island, Philippines
Sunset on Negros Island, Philippines (source: flickr/ jonrawlinson, creative commons)
Francisco Rojas
3 Sep 2014
EDC aims to reforest 10,000 hectares of forestland in the geothermal area of Negros Island within 10 years.
The Negros Island Geothermal Business Unit (NIGBU) of the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) aims to reforest 10,000 hectares of forestland in the geothermal area through its BINHI program in a period of ten years.
This was bared by Engr. Dwight Maxino, vicepresident of NIGBU-EDC. Presently BINHI’s tree for life module has already planted 7,600 hectares of endangered prime forest trees in denuded forestland in the geothermal area.
Furthermore, BINHI as a forest restoration program planted only local indigenous species of trees primarily to attract biodiversity that showed a good survival rate of 60-80 percent.
Maxino added that the plantation which is a large scale reforestation near the area of Mount Talinis are nurtured and given a budget for maintenance of five years to ensure survival until it becomes a matured forest in a period of ten years.
The BINHI program is EDC’s counterpart of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’(DENR) National Greening Program (NGP) of which EDC has also planted 300 hectares of trees in Ayungon, Negros Oriental.
Source: Negros Chronicle Website
