Choose the Baguio Trees - PLEASE!

CHOOSE THE BAGUIO TREES
repost from http://www.choosephils.com/read_post.php?cat=travel&id=1369

Despite the outcry from environmental groups and concerned citizens, Baguio’s City Building and Architecture’s Office, with the blessing of the Department of Environment has issued a permit for the construction of a 7-storey parking building for the SM Baguio shopping mall.

Based on 2010 city records on land use, only 521 hectares out of Baguio’s 5,749 hectares, a mere 9 percent, is all that is left for trees. The rest of the land has been used for buildings and other infrastructure.

Now the city’s largest shopping mall, SM Baguio is expected to reduce this further by cutting and uprooting --- trees to make room for a parking building.

Baguio residents love their trees, in fact some of them even plant trees even during the typhoon season. It takes 10-20 years for a tree to fully grow.

Despite this, Baguio City Hall has agreed to cut down 182 of these precious trees on Luneta Hill which is the sole remaining green zone in the Central Business District in order for a 7-storey parking building to be built despite the lack of a public consultation.

With the recent calamities in other parts of the country, specifically the floods that struck the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan people cannot help but to question the wisdom (or the lack of) of this move by government.

Councilor Erdolfo Balajadia, chairman of the Baguio Regreening Movement Chairman said he supports the project only if the mall chain follows the 12 conditions of the permit issued by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Balajadia said they will monitor the proceedings to make sure that SM fully complies with government conditions.

At 2pm on January 21, pro-nature groups will stage a protest action along Governor Pack Road to condemn the cutting of the trees by the SM mall management.

Social media is also playing its part: there is an ongoing petition on Facebook that upon completion would be sent to President Noynoy Aquino and former lawmaker and environmentalist Nereus Acosta.