BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya, Jan 4 (PIA) – The country has earned an excellent rating on its environmental performance last year because of its improved forest cover, an official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources(DENR) said.

Rommel Abesamis, DENR assistant secretary for foreign-assisted and special projects, said the country achieved 100 percent Environment Performance Index (EPI) last year as reported by the World Economic Forum(WEF).

He made the statement during the recent launching of the Forestland Management Project (FMP) for the provinces of Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino.

“We made it first from other countries such as South Korea, Australia, United States, Singapore and Israel among others,” he said.

He said one of the factors that led to the country’s improved EPI was the nationwide implementation of the National Greening Program (NGP).

The NGP hopes to plant some 1.5 billion trees covering about 1.5 Million hectares for a period of six (6) years from 2011 to 2016 in lands in the public domain.

Different sectors participated in the program, including national and local government officials and employees, private and civic organizations and the youth.

Abesamis also noted that the 10-year implementation of the FMP for the provinces of Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino will further improve the forest cover in the country.

The FMP aims to plant more than 1.5 billion trees within a 64,000 sub-watershed areas in the two provinces.

According to Benjamin Tumaliuan, DENR regional director for Cagayan Valley, there is a need to focus on forest land management in the provinces of Quirino and Isabela as their latest satellite image assessment of their forest cover show a significant reduction since the 1990s.

He said the forest cover of Nueva Vizcaya, considered as one of the watershed areas of Cagayan Valley, has increased from only 23 percent in the 1990s along with the province of Cagayan which registered the highest forest cover in the region at 35 percent.

“This will serve as a challenge for us because any economic activity in region 2 will affect others. Therefore, we need to develop and improve the forest cover of Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino provinces,” Tumaliuan said.