By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
I arranged the visit to the home of Gabriel Galamto in sitio Gawidan in Bagumbayan, Tabuk City, morning of March 16 for three reasons. First, Atty. Arthur Kub-ao, a fellow member of the Kalinga Anti-pollution Action Group (KAPAG), wanted to meet Manong Gabriel after he read my article in the Tabuk Life July-September 2010 issue describing the latter as an environmental hero for successfully planting and nurturing 11 hectares of trees which I recently posted in my Facebook account. The Tabuk Life also featured the successful tree farm of Atty. Kub-ao at sitio Taniok, barangay New Tanglag, Tabuk City, in its July-September 2013 issue. Second, Atty. Kub-ao and I wanted to take a look at the current state of at least one of the several forests of Manong Gabriel. And last, I wanted to interview Manong Gabriel again as the Manila Times had given the go signal to write a feature story on him for his outstanding tree growing efforts.
We arrived at the home of the Galamtos around 8:30 and had some talk over coffee and inadila, the special Kalinga rice cake, before proceeding to the forest. From the conversation, we learned that the paper trees Manong Gabriel planted with the help of his family across the Chico River in barangay Dupag territory while he was still an employee of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in 1989 is still practically in tact. Manong Gabriel said that the establishment of some of his later tree plantations were funded by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) adding that most of his fellow residents who availed of the programs of the agency have failed because “saanda tinaripato” (they did not take care) of the projects. He would repeat the remark a couple of times more in the course of the visit.
The uphill trek to paper tree plantation which Manong Gabriel intended to show us shortened Atty. Kub-ao’s and my breathe but seem not to have an affect on Manong Gabriel who is now 76. He walked ahead of us to cut parts of reeds and other plants that crowded the trail. He admitted that he no longer visits the plantation as often as he used to thus the neglect of the trail. Taking note of the more or less two kilometers ascending trail to the nearest plantation, Atty. Kub-ao commended the Galamtos for the labors they have invested in their trees. He said that the mere hauling of the seedlings to the sites through such distance is not a joke.
The first site which we reached after around 20 minutes had some lines of bamboo grooves with towering poles. They are what survived of the planting materials he obtained from the DENR eight years ago. Noting the lower portions of the grooves which are thick with a mesh of branches, Atty. Kub-ao said that what they do in their farm is to clean the branches so that it would be easy to gather the poles and there would be room for shoots to grow.
Atty. Kub-ao noticed that the plantation had not been brushed for sometime. There were some coffee trees, fruit trees and bananas in the area. Atty. Kub-ao said he understood that when trees are already past the delicate stage the thinking that they are already big and can be left alone to the elements sets in and that in the case of Manong Gabriel, the mentality must have been compounded by the distance to the plantation, his age and the expense of hiring people to cut down grass factored in the unkempt state of the trail and the plantations. He said that based on his experience, the maintenance of plantations are burdensome elaborating that they have three laborers they pay P250.00 a day excluding the food and the liquor at the end of the day. He added that they also use a grass cutter and herbicides in areas where cutting is impossible. Manong Gabriel depends on manual grass cutting and no chemicals.
The plantation Manong Gabriel wanted to show us was just beside the site with bamboo grooves. It was thick with paper trees which went straight up as they were planted close together. They could be at least 10 meters tall. The plantation also looked like it had not been brushed for years. They swap observations about nuisance plants agreeing that the vine locally known as skylab could smother small plants because it grows rapidly. The good thing about it is that it could be killed by just cutting. Atty. Kub-ao said that the most harmful plant in his plantation is a climbing plant which bristles with thorns called karamot. It could climb the tallest tree and it is hard to kill because it is protected by its thorns and if sprayed with herbicides, it would dry up but the seeds will spread and sprout. According to the lawyer, the best way to terminate the plant is to uproot it while still small.
While viewing the paper tree plantation, Manong Gabriel shared that he would avail of the new program of the DENR which is to provide their reforestation partners who have grown trees with furniture-making equipment. I just let the information pass but on the way home, I remarked to Atty. Kub-ao that the DENR really never runs out of harebrained ideas. First, the new program assumes that the reforestation projects it has funded now have harvestable trees when the truth is it would be good if five percent of these sites do. Second, by providing their partners with furniture-making equipment, they are giving the go signal for the decimation of the grown trees in no time at all. So where is the intent of the tree-planting activities of the government to build a protection from the threats of climate change?
Aside from a container of inandila, Manong Gabriel also gave us a bag-full of vegetables from their farm and around 10 coffee seedlings for planting in the tree farm of Atty. Kub-ao. Atty. Kub-ao would remark to me that the ball of earth encasing the seedlings were 10 times bigger than those of seedlings provided by the DENR which make the latter prone to damage during the transport to the sites.
On the way home, obviously impressed by the results of the labors of Manong Gabriel, Atty. Kub-ao put down the success of the latter as a tree grower to his background as a worker of the DA and more importantly, to his love and passion for trees.**
