San Nicolas, Pangasinan, Philippines — “We need to help Indigenous Peoples organizations in managing our country’s forest lands and in the same manner, empower national policies to achieve this end”, Forester Tommy T. Valdez said during the December 17 activity conducted jointly by the Society of Filipino Foresters, Inc (SFFI), the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (Ilocos Regional Office, PENRO-Pangasinan, and CENRO-Urdaneta), and the San Roque Power Corporation (SRPC) in collaboration with the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) – Pangasinan. 

The outreach was an initiative held to reach out to the indigenous community in Sitio Malico, San Nicolas, Pangasinan that holds 2,700 hectares of forest lands under a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) issued by the NCIP. Traversing the said area is the Villa Verde Trail — now developed as a 22.3-kilometer Pangasinan segment of the Pangasinan-Nueva Ecija Road, which was started in 2015.

Using a portion of the PhP880 million budget, which also included the construction of a bridge, road drainage and slope protection structures, more than 14 kilometers of the said road have already been concreted according to a project brief from the Ilocos Regional Office of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

The Villa Verde trail is a historic site traversed by Allied Forces in pursuit of the retreating Japanese soldiers in the Caraballo mountains during World War II. 

In the 1980s, the DPWH was forced to close the Villa Verde Trail to motorists due to challenges in road maintenance.  Its condition worsened after the devastating intensity 7.7 earthquake in 1990 (with Rizal, Nueva Ecija as epicenter) with massive road slips and landslides that left the trail unpassable.

Food items, clothes, and toys were given as Christmas tokens for the community via a short program and salo-salo (a simple Filipino-style banquet).

— SFFI/Advocacy Towards the Passage of the SFM Bill – Phase 2_17 December 2020