North Cotabato cops foil attempt to smuggle lumbers

NORTH COTABATO -- Policemen foiled on Saturday an attempt by poachers to smuggle out 1, 138 board feet of lumbers from a protected rainforest in Alamada town in North Cotabato.The undocumented forest products were intercepted by personnel of the Alamada municipal at a checkpoint in Sitio Kitub in Barangay Bao in the same town, on board two light trucks en route to nearby Midsayap municipality, also in North Cotabato.Supt. Romeo Galgo, Jr., spokesman of the Police Regional Office-12 in Gen. Santos City, said the lumbers were immediately impounded by personnel of the Alamada municipal police led by Senior Inspector Jojet Nicolas.In an initial report to his superiors, Nicolas said the drivers of the two trucks carrying the lumbers could not present any standard government-issued permit to cut and transport forest products when they were stopped at a checkpoint for questioning.Nicolas said they learned of the attempt to smuggle out the lumbers, poached from rainforests at the border of North Cotabato’s Alamada and Banisilan towns, from barangay officials.Galgo said the Alamada police office had asked the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to look into allegations that the lumbers were cut from forest trees harvested clandestinely by a group led by a businessman named Salahudin Abdullah.The Alamada municipal police had also impounded last October 10 a truck loaded with 1,514 board feet of lumbers intercepted by policemen at Barangay Paruwayan.Barangay Paruwayan in southeast of Alamada is also near the periphery of a watershed area with vast swaths of rainforests from where springs several rivers flowing downstream to peasant enclaves along mountainsides.