The forest is important for the people.
Taking care of the forest and mountains is not easy.
The Philippines has 90 percent forest cover.
It is one of the 17 mega-diverse countries in the world.
But the country's forest cover is dwindling.
You have illegal mining, illegal hunting.
The people, they go out, they cut trees.
They burn forests.
Rangers were stationed in fixed checkpoints to capture illegal product.
By that time the damage was already done.
Even though they did receive a lot of paper reports
these paper reports were not good for real-time decision making.
There was no way to validate whether those reports were true accounts.
And it was apparent that we needed a better way to address forest protection.
This is how Lawin was born.
Lawin is the Tagalog word for the Philippine Hawk Eagle.
Some of the responses have to do with better enforcement of environmental law
but other responses have to do with how to work with the community,
so they can change the destructive behavior for behavior that is more in line with conservation
and protection.
During the first year We trained at least 1,000 community volunteers.
Forest rangers are the heart of the forest protection system.
They are the front liners.
We conduct our patrolling through Lawin System and we gather a lot of data, most especially
about threats during the operation activity while enforcing
the law.
When the Lawin System was introduced, the forest rangers, including the regular
employees of DENR, can now patrol the forest.
They can now use their Smartphone's as tools.
Before Lawin, our challenge was we didn't have enough resources.
We used our personal cellphones.
We cannot take photos because they are cheap cellphones.
But with the help of Lawin, we were given cellphones with cyber tracking
and with good cameras that can do direct reporting.
We have created a dashboard that helps with data visualization.
So it is easier for the decision maker to understand what is happening in the field.
Through this innovation, this technology, we are able to speed up the transfer of information.
And also, with the aid of technology we can make a holistic analysis of this information.
And so we save resources, and at the same time the actions are more effective.
There are a lot of long-term benefits in the field of work,
especially for the future generations.
There are fewer landslides, as well as accidents in critical areas.
We can now say that the forest protection program is 85-95 percent effective.
Forest in many countries stands or falls depending of the policy the decision makers approve.
Today, decision makers at the national, regional, and local levels
can have access to the Lawin data, patrol data, simultaneously.
We moved from covering 240,000 hectares of natural forest
to covering more than 7 million hectares of natural forest.
And this was all done just in a matter of a few months.
I can now describe our mountains as healthy and improving.
The forest is for all of us.
That's why you need to protect it for all Filipinos.
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