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SUBIC
BAY FREEPORT—In about five years, most of the Subic Bay
Freeport will be abloom, and fruits will be dangling
from some 7,000 trees that would line up the main roads
from the Subic gateway to Cubi Point and up to the Naval
Magazine area.
More
than that, in about 50 years, the mango, acacia, narra
and even the lowly banaba trees planted by employees of
the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) over the
past two months would have been worth more than P60
billion. And that value wouldn’t even include the
timber, fruits and beauty to be derived from the trees.
“This is
our green investment,” explained Amethya de la
Llana-Koval, manager of the SBMA Ecology Center, the
lead unit in the tree-planting program.
“It’s
basically our way of reducing the environmental
footprint of industry and commerce in the Subic
Freeport, but we also see it as an investment in
aesthetics, food production and ecological balance,” she
added.
Citing
estimates by a professor at the University of Calcutta,
the SBMA Ecology Center said a single tree could be
worth $193,250—or a whooping P8.6 million each—because
of the environmental value it provides.
“A
full-grown tree can remove as much as 12 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year,” Koval said. “In 50
years of its lifetime, a tree could control air
pollution to the tune of $62,000 and generate oxygen
worth $31,250,” she added.
Moreover, a single tree in 50 years could prevent soil
erosion and increase soil fertility worth $31,250,
recycle $37,000 worth of water, and provide home for
animals at $31,250, the same estimate indicated.
With
these figures, the 7,000 trees planted by SBMA employees
this planting season “could easily be worth more than
P60 billion,” Koval said.
Factor
in the thousands more planted under the annual
tree-planting activities here and the SBMA
“adopt-a-forest” program involving business locators and
community groups in Subic, “then we would have billions
and billions in green investment,” she said.
SBMA
forester Pat Escusa Jr., who coordinated the agency’s
recent tree-planting activity, said some 3,000 employees
from several departments took two hours off every Friday
for the last two months to plant a total of 7,038
trees—an average of two seedlings per employee.
The
species planted included fruit-bearers like mango,
cashew, jackfruit and chico, as well as ornamental ones
like fire tree, golden shower, banaba, narra and
mahogany—all grown out of a small tree nursery
maintained by the Ecology Center at Subic’s El Kabayo
area.
“We’re
taking this thing seriously, not just for photo-ops,”
Escusa said, pointing out that the
Ecology Center
had specified the planting pattern, the spaces between
saplings, as well as the planting procedure for each of
the eight batches of tree planters.
The
planting spaces, Escusa said, varied from four to 10
meters apart depending on the species, while the
planting pattern varied according to the area planted.
In
places near tourism facilities like the golf course, a
preponderance of flowering trees were planted to enhance
the landscape, with some mango and acacia alternating in
between.
In
residential areas, mahogany was selected for planting,
while fruit-bearing trees were set aside for hilly
terrain and remote areas.
Escusa
said the fruit trees were purposely planted to benefit
the local community, as well as provide food for
monkeys, birds and other wildlife.
The
other week, SBMA chairman Feliciano Salonga and
administrator Armand Arreza joined a special
tree-planting activity on the occasion of the chairman’s
birthday.
As
requested by Salonga, 1,000 saplings of narra, mango and
citrus trees were planted that day on a hillside
overlooking
Subic’s
Triboa
Bay.
Salonga planted his lone “birthday tree,” a mango of the
Sweet Elena variety, while Arreza planted his own green
investments—one citrus and two mango trees. |
