Illegal loggers beware!

ILLEGAL logging has always been the perennial problem in our country. Laws, bans, regulations have been passed and implemented, but illegal log- ging operations continue. Many cause-oriented groups and environmentalists have been working sometimes even together to at least minimize illegal cutting of trees and identify these illegal loggers.

As we know it, trees are a source of food, oxygen and many more of its life-giving properties. But some groups go on with their selfish operations and use it as a source of fund for their organization, like communist rebels. They blinded themselves to the fact that trees are vital to our existence.

Trees prevent flooding in lowlying and coastal areas. Look at the disaster our country faced during recent destructive ty- phoons. Not only much damage to properties and agricultural products were experienced but many people were killed, became homeless and went hungry for some time.

The Department of National Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines ( AFP) will be working together in the campaign to go after illegal loggers. The anti-illegal logging task force has been reclassified and former civilian entities and military contingents were dissolved.

The AFP was tapped to be at the forefront of the operations. This development is very welcome for soldiers really dedicated and giving all their time and effort to finish their tasks.

Illegal loggers should stop depleting our forests to save the environment and our people. They should start planting thousands of trees, stop being illegal loggers and bring back what they robbed and got from our mother earth.

And the trees they plant must profit nature and the people and no longer themselves. That should be their new way of thinking rather to gain millions of pesos from their illegal operations. They should be more unselfish and join the effort to save the trees and other works of nature.