The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has canceled its agreement with the Socorro Bayanihan Services Incorporated (SBSI) for violating the provisions of the tenurial instrument awarded in June 2004 covering 353 hectares in the Siargao Island Protected Landscape and Seascape (SIPLAS) in Surigao del Norte.

The DENR cancelled Protected Area Community-Based Resource Management Agreement (PACBRMA) No. 74007 entered into with SBSI, citing violations that included the establishment of settlement/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), establishment of infrastructure such as new access roads, communal quadrangle with a basketball court, volleyball court, and a stage with bleacher, wave pool, recording studio, radio station, gymnasium/dome, landscaping, and monuments that are not included in the CRMP.

The DENR has been working with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the provincial government since the suspension of the said PACBRMA in September 2023. Currently, the collaborative team is working on the reintegration and resettlement of affected occupants. There are 404 households of tenured migrants in the said PACBRMA area that will be relocated.

PACBRMA is an agreement entered into by and between the DENR and organized tenured migrant communities or interested indigenous peoples in protected areas and buffer zones which has a term of twenty-five (25) years and renewable for another twenty-five (25) years.

Following the approved CRMP for 2010-2014, the DENR awarded SBSI an initial 122 hectares within its PACBRMA area in 2010 to develop the site for agroforestry and assisted natural regeneration (ANR). This was followed by an additional 69 hectares for indigenous tree plantation in 2011.

As early as August 2019, a monitoring and investigation team of the DENR confirmed the establishment of houses and other residential structures that were prohibited in the CRMP. After repeated advice to SBSI to secure permits for the structures not covered by CRMP in the same month, and subsequently on June 2021, December 2022, and September 2023, DENR Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo Loyzaga issued a Letter of Suspension to the Socorro Bayanihan Services Inc. (SBSI) on September 29, 2023 as the latter introduced improvements and structures in the area that are not under the Protected Area Management Plan and without the required endorsement from the Protected Area Management Board (PAMB).

Under Republic Act No. 7586 (National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) Act of 1992 and Executive Order No. 263 (Adopting Community-Based Forest Management as the National Strategy to Ensure the Sustainable Development of the Country’s Forestlands Resources and Providing Mechanisms for its Implementation), the DENR is mandated to promote the conservation of biodiversity and sustainable development in protected areas and buffer zones to maintain essential ecological processes and life support systems which will enhance people’s capacity to sustain human life and development, as well as plants and animals.

Towards this end, the DENR provides tenured migrant communities and interested indigenous peoples within protected areas and buffer zones, tenure over established CBP areas, provided that the activities to be undertaken are consistent with the Protected Area Management Plan (PAMP).

Aside from the violations of SBSI on the issued PACBRMA, SBSI had been the subject of a senate hearing on the Committee of Public Order and Dangerous Drugs chaired by Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa on alleged qualified trafficking in persons, facilitation of child marriage, solemnization of child marriage, and child abuse charges. As a result of the information filed by the Department of Justice, a warrant of arrest has been issued by RTC Branch 31 of Dapa, Surigao del Norte against SBSI president Jey Rence Quilario alias Senior Agila and 12 other officers on said offenses. ###