Pimentel said members of Congress should muster the political will to approve the long-pending bill on the log ban to stop the rapid denudation of the country’s forests.

“Our forests are being denuded at a very alarming rate. Unless forest destruction is effectively checked, the country faces even more frightening ecological disaster in the future,” he said.

The opposition senator said the logging ban should be enforced over a period of 25 years, the length of time needed for trees to mature and the country to regain its forest cover.

As proposed by Pimentel, the cutting of old-growth trees should be strictly prohibited. However, he said trees that are replanted by farmers and wood-based companies will be exempted from the ban.

Pimentel said the country’s requirements of wood will be sourced from industrial tree plantations where the logging ban will not apply.

“It is not right to prevent them from cutting or harvesting the trees that they themselves have planted. Precisely, they engaged in industrial tree planting to enable them to meet the country’s wood requirements,” he said.

Pimentel decried that illegal logging and transport of “hot” logs go on with impunity even in provinces with critical forest cover because of the connivance among loggers, forest officers of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and law enforces.

He said he was appalled at reports about rampant illegal logging even in the Lanao provinces in Mindanao despite the urgency of preserving watershed areas due to the receding water level in Lake Lanao, a major source of potable water and power in Mindanao.

Pimentel urged President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to order the Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines to stop the movement of “hot” logs by setting up checkpoints along usual routes of hauler trucks bringing these logs.

“If checkpoints proved effective in Metro Manila in catching criminal elements on the loose, there is no reason why the same mechanism will not work in stopping illegal logging in the countryside,” he said.

However, he said the PNP and AFP should see to it that only police and military officers with no record of graft should be deployed for such assignment.