Bayawan City, in Negros Oriental, Central Visayas— with the help of the local Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)—is now fully putting into operation its Forest Land Use Plan (FLUP), developed with the help of USAID’s Philippine Environmental Governance (EcoGov) Project and implemented with the DENR and other partners.

The city, which acquired a brand new forest survey instrument late last year, is now conducting forest line delineation surveys of its forest lands. The activity is being conducted by a designated Forest Survey Team composed of members from the DENR-Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (ENRO), the Bayawan City ENRO and the City Planning Development Office. The city formed the Bayawan Forest Management Unit specifically to implement the FLUP.

The city has a total forest land area of 20,245 hectares, with a forest line measuring 228 kilometers. To date, the survey team has covered 60 kilometers (or about 26 percent) of the target. The team expects to complete the survey by early next year.

“This is one fine example of how the local government and the DENR can complement each other’s functions,” said a member of the survey team. “While the DENR is helping us in surveying our forests, we are also helping the agency in performing its function of having to delineate forest lands. It’s actually a win-win situation.”

Presidential Decree No. 705 (otherwise known as the Forestry Code), issued in 1975, mandated the DENR to “delineate boundaries between permanent forest and A&D lands.”

That law is now 30 years old, but to my knowledge, only a handful of local governments have clear forest lines to date,” the survey team member said. “Soon, Bayawan will be joining them.” Such information, he added, is vital to the city’s long-term development and investment plan considering that its forestlands compose 35% of its total land area.

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