Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The Alarming Landscape of Famy and Llavac

I have always thought of Real and Infanta in Quezon as the last frontier of the forests of Southern Tagalog. But post typhoon Rosing (a decade ago) with the 2 towns were hard hit by floods, denuded forest images of the said municipalities were painted into my mind. So when Real and Infanta are to be mentioned, I am already picturing emerging grasslands and cultivated areas. I have not yet reached the towns proper or Real and Infanta, but I got the preview of how they might look like, and the sceneries were close to what I envision them to be.

We got to detour in Llavac and Famy on our way to Pangil in Laguna. Though there are still patches of wooded areas, most of what we saw are not anymore the original tree growth, as most of these are pioneering trees that grow readily and easily in forest clearings. There were also the obviously cultivated coconut which replaced primary forests. The slow growing and towering hardwoods like dipterocarps, ebony woods, etc like yakal, apitong, kamagong, narra are already gone. Their remnants could only be seen as shaped and carved furniture being sold in side wood shops. Their faint echos could only be heard dispersed in the occasional buzzing of chainsaw and lumber mill cutters, which surprisingly are abundant alongside the main road.

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