Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Tue, 7 Apr 1992 18:23:15 PDT
From:         "Indonesia Publications/Task Force" <apakabar@IGC.ORG>
Subject:      Marines Save Rainforest
X-To:         seasia-l@msu.edu

    Reuter, Subic Bay, Philippines, Jeremy Clift, April 7 - "Here everything
is lush and green and there everything is brown and dirt. There's a definite
line," said U.S. marine staff sergeant Charles Clancy, pointing to the
surrounding bare hills.
    Like a neatly coiffured parting, the treeline of the thick jungle
ends abruptly at the edge of the sprawling U.S. naval base at Subic Bay.
    Although the massive eruption of nearby Mount Pinatubo volcano last
June badly damaged Subic, deluging the base in a heavy layer of ash and
mud that buckled buildings and left palm trees folded like closed
umbrellas, the surrounding rainforest is recovering rapidly.
    Outside the perimeter of the base's 20,500 acres (8,300 hectares) of
forest, the denuded hills stand in stark contrast to the green jungle
inside.
    The white sand from Pinatubo's eruption still carpets the floor of
the jungle, but Captain Jerome Jackson says the undergrowth is thicker
than before.
    "Pinatubo's ash acted like a super-fertiliser. Things are sprouting
up everywhere," he told reporters as he escorted them on a seven-hour
foot patrol.
    Subic, an ammunition and supply depot for the U.S. Seventh Fleet, is
one of the few American military bases in the world to use jungle forest
as a natural barrier against intruders.
    The U.S. navy is proud that it has preserved the forest intact,
while large swathes of jungle across the rest of the northern Philippine
island of Luzon have been cut down.
    For the Americans, the tropical forest has a threefold purpose.
    It provides one of the best jungle survival training grounds in the
world, it protects the base and its large naval magazine, and preserves
the watershed from which the U.S. military extracts drinking water for
the base and nearby town.
    U.S. marines patrol the jungle against possible attacks by the
communist New People's Army (NPA), and against "economic intruders" --
people hunting for food or trying to cut down bamboo and lumber.
    The Philippines plans to turn Subic into a commercial ship repair
yard, oil terminal and industrial zone, and promises to preserve the
forest watershed area.
    The marines fear that without regular foot patrols, illegal loggers
could whittle away the jungle within a few years.
    "I hope they preserve this," said Lieutenant-Commander Al Twyman.
"It's really something valuable."
    Clancy said the key to preserving the forest from encroachment was
regular armed patrols, although these have not prevented all illegal
logging.
    "Without being able to tell the future, I would say that unless
someone takes up the active patrolling that we do now on a day-to-day
basis, 24 hours a day, this forest will disappear," he said.
    The Philippines is fighting a rearguard battle to preserve its
tropical rainforest, as smugglers, communist guerrillas, influential
local politicians and some members of the military cash in on a
widespread trade in illegally cut timber, officials and
environmentalists say.
    In the Philippines, forests are being cut down at the rate of
180,000 hectares (437,000 acres) a year. To halt the trend, the
government ordered a total ban on logging in virgin forests such as that
around Subic from last January.
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