Recent Forestry Practices in Buguias

Although the state's withdrawal from the forests of Buguias allowed the local inhabitants to develop the resource as they wished, the community government has been unable to reconcile the inevi-

table conflict of interests within the village. A few entrepreneurs have discovered great profits in cutting, hauling, and selling wood, both for lumber and fuel, to outside interests. This small-scale commercial logging owes its existence to the chainsaw, an expensive but profitable investment. By the early 1980s, the buzz of chainsaws emanated daily from the slopes above Buguias, seeming to foretell the demise of the remaining pine stands.

Few Buguias citizens are pleased when the sawyers sell local wood to outsiders. But firewood is in strong demand, especially in Lo-o, where large-scale farmers must provide meals for their many hired workers. Even more profitable is the traffic in construction lumber. The same chainsaws used to fell trees also mill them, and the boards thus crudely produced fetch a high price in the expanding metropolis of Baguio. Four men working half a day can (in 1986) reportedly earn as much as 1,000 pesos, provided they cut a timber stand with good road access. Even under less favorable conditions, saw owners commonly pay their workers 50 pesos for half a day, an impressive wage by Philippine standards. Because of community opposition, commercial loggers usually work surreptitiously, often at night. But this does not substantially limit their operations. In 1983, one particularly valuable stand located on the northeastern border of Buguias Village yielded an estimated 50,000 board feet over a three-month period.

Such profiteering demands protection over and above the cover of dark; usually it entails the complicity of government agents, especially military officials. In exchange for a share of the profits, officers of the Philippine Constabulary have ensured black-market loggers uninterrupted felling and safe transportation. In a few instances, military men have instigated cuts, contracting for lumber that they then sell through their own networks. Barangay officials have lodged protests with the Bureau of Forest Development (BFD), but the foresters are powerless to challenge the military hierarchy.

Conflicts have also erupted between professional sawyers and tax declaration holders. Although some individuals declared pine stands precisely with an eye to their potential timber harvests, in other cases woodcutters have descended on stands without the declaration holder's knowledge. Some woodsmen willingly placate angered declaration holders with cash payments, but others argue

that a tax declaration gives only cultivation rights, and that the plot's trees should be free for the taking. With the rapid rise of such conflicting claims, even tong tongan proceedings have difficulty resolving the contentious issues surrounding local commercial logging.

Yet in a few other Cordilleran regions pine forests have expanded in the postwar period. This is particularly true in Sagada (in Mountain Province), where villagers have assiduously planted seedlings in abandoned swiddens (Preston 1985). But in Benguet, and especially in Buguias, pine stands are in retreat. A few villages in the Buguias region have established communal forests to protect the diminishing resource, but even here removal outpaces growth. Thick stands remain only in the few rough and roadless areas; wherever soils are fertile, gardens encroach and road development follows. Knowledgeable individuals predict that few if any sizable pines will be left near Buguias by the year 2000. Seedlings continue to sprout vigorously, but few seem likely to reach maturity.

The cloud forests face less immediate threats. Valueless for lumber and disdained as firewood, oaks are cleared in large numbers only for garden expansion, or occasionally for speculation. Although the Mount Data forest is now gone and the oaks of eastern Buguias municipality are falling fast to expanding gardens, along the main Cordilleran ridge and eastward into Ifugao province wide expanses of cloud forest remain virtually untouched. They too may disappear as roads push eastward, but not for some years into a very uncertain future.