09 May, 2008 20:10
“For trees to grow healthy, we should plant trees with love and feelings,” said Rey Carubio, Canatuan Project Mill Operations manager of TVI Resource Development Phils., Inc. (TVIRD), before a mixed crowd of employees and Subanon indigenous people hosting the company’s gold-copper operations in this mountain village in Siocon, Zamboanga del Norte. They gathered on top of Mount Canatuan for a tree-planting activity last April 22; their contribution to the worldwide celebration of Earth Day 2008.
(Above) Rey Carubio (with microphone), TVIRD Mill Operations manager, exhorts employees and Subanon IPs to “plant trees with love” during the Earth Day tree planting activity at Mount Canatuan. (Below) Carubio shows Subanon Council of Elder member Lydia Dandana the proper way of planting a tree.
The activity, part of TVIRD’s Progressive Rehabilitation "(Please see story on Mine Rehabilitation and Decommissioning Plan)" program under the company’s Final Mine Rehabilitation and Decommissioning Plan, took place at the southwest dump area – mining term for earth or ore with no mineral value – of the Canatuan mine pit. The joint company-community project, aptly themed “Tubig ay Buhay: Ating Pagyamanin at Linisin (Water is Life: Let’s Clean and Take Care of It)”, sought to inculcate the value of preserving and protecting the watershed areas in and around the Canatuan Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) area.
An electrical engineer by profession, Carubio takes on agriculture as a hobby and environmental protection as a personal crusade; he has underwent various seminars in agriculture and farming and operates a 22-hectare farm in his hometown in Davao City in the Southeastern portion of Mindanao. His spearhead role in the tree-planting activity, therefore, was quite appropriate as he lead participants in the planting of a total of 1,300 auri tree seedlings and 600 vetiver grass slips. TVIRD has planted over 100,000 trees in the Canatuan CADT, located in a mountainous region in Southwestern Mindanao, since the company began operations in mid-2004 under a Mineral Production Sharing Agreement with the Philippine government.
(Above) TVIRD employees and Subanon IPs proceed down the slopes of the mine pit to plant seedlings. (Below) Subanon youths in action: “We are proud to take part in this activity.”
“We are grateful that activities like this are being done by the company,” said Hanelyn Mamad Juhal, a 20-year old BS Agri-Business student of the Western Mindanao State University in Zamboanga City. “This will undoubtedly help in rejuvenating the environment.”
For her part, Analyn Gutoman Dandana, a TVIRD scholar like Juhal, said she is “proud to take part in this tree-planting activity since it is for the good of succeeding generations of Subanons. We are the ones who would be left behind after the company’s mining operation here. That’s why, as Mr. Carubio said, we plant every seedling with love, as much as we love our homeland.”
TVIRD is currently transitioning from the Gossan (gold-silver) phase of operations to the Sulphide (copper-zinc) phase. The company has been implementing Progressive Rehabilitation – including reforestation and revegetation – in Canatuan since the start of the Gossan phase in mid-2004.
Employees and residents are confident that so long as they continue to be united in the pursuit of activites aimed at preserving the environment, Canatuan, now providing them the benefits of development through minerals extraction, will continue to be a source of wealth for the Subanons long after TVIRD has gone.
