OCAMPO, Camarines Sur -- Armed only with citizen’s arrest, a community-based group here under a church program braves odds and danger in checking illegal activities inside the Mt. Isarog National Park.

        They call themselves the Mt. Isarog Guardians (MIGs), a 184-strong community-based group from 23 villages surrounding the slopes of the highest peak in Bicol, who committed to guard its forest and natural resources.

        In close coordination with the village officials, the MIGs work as team and closely link to the MIGs in all the other villages in Mt. Isarog. All MIGs had undergone environmental law enforcement and ecology training-seminars since 2002 provided by several government and non-government agencies that included the Caceres Social Action Center Foundation, Inc. (Casafi), Care Philippines and the National Integrated Protected Areas Programme (NIPAP).

        Tereso C. Gonzales, MIG team leader, narrated they rely on guts and intuition in launching operations against illegal activities of loggers, treasure hunters, wildlife poachers and slash-and-burn farmers encroaching the protected area.

        Gonzales rued the Department Environment and Natural Resources’ (DENR) suspension of the issuance of deputation order and for two years now they were stripped of authority to apprehend persons conducting activities inside the national park, but he said, the City Environment Office here advised them to assert citizen’s arrest to continuously safeguard the protected resources here.

        Francisco M. Barbosa, village chief of Ginaban, declared the intervention of the the Casafi, through the Mt. Isarog Area Development Program (MIADP), has increased environmental awareness among the villagers.

        “Before, the people in the community just simply ignore and care less about illegal activities in the protected area. Now that many orientation seminars were already conducted here people never fail to report illegal activities in the forest,” Barbosa told the INQUIRER in the dialect.

        He estimated 30 percent of the 480-hectare village of Ginaban is within the 10,112-hectare protected area of Mt. Isarog National Park.

        The village chief said the initiatives of MIGs have dramatically reduced incidence of national park encroachment and illegal activities. He said he is aware of the limitations of the MIGs as far as apprehension is concerned consequent to the suspension of the deputation a local forest guards. He said he coordinates with the local police to apprehend violators upon MIGs’ confirmation of illegal activities.

        Reynulfo Juan, OIC regional director of the DENR, confirmed the suspension of the deputation of the MIGs here and that the DENR secretary has removed the authority from the regional directors to deputize local forest guards.

        Juan explained that they are now working for the restoration of the deputation of volunteers and pledged within the year that the MIGs are to be deputized again to help in the enforcement of environmental laws.

        Ramon G. Eder Jr., another MIG patrolling the village of Panicuason in this city, confessed their group has received threats many times while apprehending violators of environmental laws but they keep their faith and collective courage to pursue their commitment as stewards of the national park.

        Roberto Pacis, a MIG of Ginaban, revealed they usually ask support from MIGs in adjoining villages to show force. He reasoned that a big group is a deterrent to encroachers of the protected area, which when coupled with diplomacy and encouraging words, he said, always end up with poachers, loggers and treasure hunters peacefully abandoning their illegal activities.

        The NIPAP has reported excavations inside the national park left behind by treasure hunters in search of the fabled Yamashita treasure on the mountainside of the towns of Pili, Calabanga and Ocampo.

        Originally organized under a conservation program of Care Philippines in early 2000, the MIGs have been patrolling the Mt. Isarog National Park for the past four years that sustained the participation of communities in forest resource protection.

        The DENR-Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB) described the 1,966-meter Mt. Isarog as an inactive volcano with a crater depth of 1,000 meters and endowed with 143 kinds of birds and 3,000 sub-groups of plants of which 1,300 are still unidentified. No mineral is known within the protected area, except sulfur deposit in Hiwacloy, Goa, Camarines Sur.

        With a population mix of indigenous people of two Agta tribes (Tabagnon and Cimaron), Bicolanos, Visayans and Ilocanos, some 29,819 individuals, comprising 5,375 families from 23 villages surrounding the slopes of Mt. Isarog, live there.

        Also called “Vulcan de Agua”, the Bicol’s highest peak with 16 major rivers provides potable water to 15 of the 35 towns of Camarines Sur and irrigate downstream at its foot some 67,400 hectares of rice lands.

        The PAWB’s baseline survey in May-June 1999 revealed that some 1,500 individuals lived inside the national park of which 8.9 percent of the protected area had been built-up for agricultural and residential purposes.

        Mt. Isarog was first classified timberland with an area of 13,433 hectares under Proclamation No. 157 dated March 28, 1928. Seven years later, on August 17, 1935, the national government issued Proclamation No. 840 that established the Mt. Isarog Forest Reserve until Proclamation No. 923 declared on July 20, 1938 its 10,112-hectare as Mt. Isarog National Park.

        When the National Integrated Protected Areas Systems (NIPAS) Act of 1992 was enforced, Mt. Isarog was included among the eight priority areas in the country listed for the establishment of protected areas. NIPAS sought the legal establishment of protected areas all over the archipelago.

        The DENR-PAWB considers the forest of Mt. Isarog to be the only remaining intact forest in Bicol but vulnerable to exploitation because it is fragmented and isolated.

        Robert Dy, MIADP program coordinator, said the integrated program aside from mobilizing the MIGs for continuous forest protection also employs strategies that address some of the educational, health, economic, advocacy and organizational needs of the target communities.

        Dy said the MIADP is the response of the Archdiocese of Caceres to the growing threat of interlocking issues to overall environmental state of Mt. Isarog National Park, i.e., addressing other socio-cultural and socio-economic concerns.

        The MIADP’s components, including the delivery of specific services and community organizing methods, cover 22 villages of Naga City and the six towns around Mt. Isarog that the Casafi viewed as the key to the protection and preservation of biodiversity and ecological balance of the national park.

        Nida Rellova, 26, a volunteer teacher of MIADP’s alternative education center in the village of Ginaban, trains children, ages 6-12 years old, basic writing, reading and counting who were very poor and living near the edge of the national park’s boundary. Included as well in the teaching design, the discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of caring of Mt. Isarog, she added.

        Rellova said she teaches 22 village kids born to indigent parents living near the boundary of the national park, with no means to send their young ones to school down in the lowlands.

        She narrated the alternative learning program for these out-of-school kids includes health and nutrition with feeding program aside from the provision of basic writing, reading and counting skills.

        Rellova added that once the children learn the basics, and the respective parents allow them to, they endorse her students to the nearest formal elementary school for further formal education.

        Archbishop Leonardo Z. Legazpi, the brainchild of the environmental program of the Archdiocese of Caceres through the Casafi, said the MIADP embraces community concerns that include needs that are not directly environmental in nature but drive the communities to practice unsustainable and environmentally destructive way of life.

        “For example, you cannot totally blame the people why they resort to environmental malpractice like charcoal production or slash-and-burn farming. These people have no other means, that’s why awareness raising becomes necessary alongside provision of alternative sources of livelihood,” Legazpi explained.

        The prelate copped the challenge of ensuring the life-giving nature of Mt. Isarog as a paramount task that requires action and cooperation from all stakeholders---concerned local government units and agencies, the communities, the parishes, groups and individuals.