DENR-BMB will hire more workers for protected areas

File photo courtesy of Department of Environment and Natural Resources

CALAMBA CITY (PIA) – The Department of Environment and Natural Resources – Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENR-BMB) will soon recruit more people to help protect environmental sites.

DENR-BMB director Asec. Marcial C. Amaro Jr. announced that over 460 permanent employees will be designated as additional workforce to the 248 protected areas in the country, with a collective land area of roughly 7.8 million hectares.

Since the passage of the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System (E-NIPAS) Act of 2018, Amaro said that it has become a challenge to enforce environmental laws as they are often short-staffed.

About 200 permanent employees, including protected area superintendents, assistant superintendents, managers, supervisors, and rangers will be accepted in the first half of the year, while the remainder will be selected before 2024 ends.

“While this project will provide for the needed support, on our own in the DENR will have the marine stations coming up and crafting the research agenda because its center will have a unique set of researchable areas in terms of the nature and biogeographic regions,” Amaro said.

In the current set-up, some PENROs and CENROs also act as the concurrent Protected Area Superintendents (PASUs), and BMB believes that with the new permanent staff in the protected areas, a stronger and more reliable system for protected areas will be established.

“When we had the ENIPAS in 2018, there were more designated and proclaimed protected areas [nationwide] but there were no adequate personnel deployed.”

The director said the remarks as the Philippine government has entered into a joint maritime conservation project with the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity and the United Nations Development Programme that aims to develop and improve the management of networks of marine protected areas and marine corridors. 

With the Philippines’ habitats and ecosystems, the country is known as a biodiversity hotspot and plays a major role in maintaining ecological balance in constant threat from illegal resource use and development activities and declining resources. (CH/PIA-Laguna)

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