By Othel V. Campos

Barely a month into the job, a team of environmental law enforcers, which Secretary Joselito Atienza formed this month, seized P2.9 million worth of suspected illegally cut narra and assorted lumber products at a lumberyard in Bulacan the other day.

?For its maiden operation, a catch this big is a good precursor of what is yet we are to see from the team in the days ahead,? Atienza said. But he pointed out that he?d rather see illegal loggers caught red-handed instead of apprehended wood products. ?The bigger the catch only means trees are still illegally cut, and that?s not good news. What we want to happen is for the cutting to stop, to catch these criminals even before they set out to do their nefarious act,? Atienza stressed.

Atienza said members of the Environmental Law Enforcement Task Force swooped down on the Oriental Wood Processing Corp., where some 1,541 pieces of narra wood valued at P1.7 million (14,298 board feet) were discovered, including 2,734 pieces of mixed construction wood, consisting of white lauan and tanguile, worth around P1.19 million (35,080 board feet), for a total of 49,378 board feet. The confiscated products can fill three 10-wheeler trucks.

Citing reports from task force executive director retired Gen. Pedro Bulaong, Atienza said the narra wood bore no Environment Department hatchet marks while the rest of the seized forest products showed signs that they were cut into smaller pieces using chainsaws, fueling suspicions that the wood products were illegally sourced from timber poachers.

Department field forestry officers use especially designed hatchets as part of the agency?s monitoring mechanism to identify legitimately sourced timber products as opposed to those supplied by illegal loggers who cut round logs into smaller pieces using chainsaws immediately after cutting trees.

Oriental Wood Processing management failed to present documents for the wood products, prompting the task force agents to issue corresponding apprehension receipts. The agents conducted an on-site inventory of the contraband as documentary evidence against the firm?s owners for violation of Presidential Decree 705 or the Revised Philippine Forestry Code.

Wood products sold by OWPC should only be bought from legitimate wood suppliers as stated in their permits issued by the department. The firm is a holder of lumber dealer permit which is to expire on Sept.10 but its environmental compliance certificate for its kiln drying plant expired on March 19, 2004.