The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on Monday canceled its agreement with the Socorro Bayanihan Services Inc. (SBSI) for violating the provisions of the tenurial instrument awarded in June 2004 covering 353 hectares of the Siargao Island Protected Landscape and Seascape (SIPLAS) in Surigao del Norte.
SBSI has also been found to be involved with alleged trafficking in persons, the facilitation of child marriage and its solemnization and child abuse charges.
As a result of the information filed by the Department of Justice, a warrant of arrest has been issued by the Regional Trial Court Branch 31 of Dapa, Surigao del Norte against SBSI president Jey Rence Quilario, alias Senior Agila, and 12 other officers of the offenses.
The DENR cancelled Protected Area Community-Based Resource Management Agreement (PACBRMA) No. 74007 entered into with SBSI, citing violations that include the establishment of settlement and residence in the PACBRMA area, the establishment of checkpoints strictly regulating the entry of non-members, failure to submit the required monthly, quarterly or annual reports about the implementation of its Community-based Resource Management Plan (CRMP), among others.
The PACBRMA was also cancelled after SBSI established infrastructure such as new access roads, communal quadrangle with a basketball court, volleyball court, stage with bleacher, wave pool, recording studio, radio station, gymnasium, dome, landscaping and monuments not included in the CRMP.
The DENR said it has been working with the Department of Justice, the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the provincial government of Surigao del Norte since the suspension of the PACBRMA in September 2023.
A collaborative team is working on the reintegration and resettlement of affected occupants as 404 households of tenured migrants in the PACBRMA area will be relocated.
The PACBRMA has a term of 25 years and renewable for another 25 years.
Following the approved 2010-2014 CRMP, the DENR awarded SBSI in 2010 an initial 122 hectares within PACBRMA area to develop the site for agroforestry and assisted natural regeneration. This was followed by an additional 69 hectares in 2011.
But as early as August 2019, a DENR monitoring and investigation team confirmed the establishment of houses and residential structures prohibited by the CRMP.
The DENR gave assurance it provides tenured migrant communities and indigenous peoples within protected areas and buffer zones tenure over established CBP areas provided the activities undertaken are consistent with the protected area management plan.
