A job for TF Kalikasan

MAN’S greed is not only man’s worst enemy but Mother Nature’s as well.

So when fish pen/cages operators in Anda bewailed their losses in the recent fishkill, we say to them” Serves you right”! The first time fishkill occurred in that town in 2007, bangus-eaters could only sympathize with the fish operators who lost their millions worth of investments in those fish pens and cages. Then everyone just groaned and bore the fishkill’s impact – prices of bangus rose by almost 20% shortly thereafter.

The second time fishkill occurred in Anda five months ago, people began to wonder whether or not the local government of that town and the provincial government had learned their lessons from the 2007 fishkill.  Again, the fish pen operators were given the benefit of the doubt believing the circumstances that led to the fishkill that time around were different, and everything was forgiven and forgotten.

But the fishkill last week only confirmed what most everyone suspected five months ago but did little about it. It was the greed of the fish operators that precipitated the series of fishkill in Anda. The fish pen operators, most of whom we suspect are operating illegally, perhaps never considered that unlike lightning, fishkill strikes at the same place for as many times for as long as there are criminals who insist on the degradation of our environment.

Our government’s fishery agency had not been remiss in its mandate to instruct the marine industry sector on how to utilize our water and rivers but nobody bothered to listen on how to do things right. But doing the right thing is always deemed costly by businessmen because they ate up profits, and the only acceptable strategy to maximize profits is to exploit whatever resources are available to them regardless of what the law states, or what Mother Nature dictates. As usual, they took the risks knowing government could not stop them but they erred grievously when they took Mother Nature out of the equation. What the local government refused to do, Mother Nature made certain the greedy operators got their comeuppance.

Without man’s intervention, greed, like karma, will have its payback. The unscrupulous operators will undoubtedly continue to lose if they insist on their harmful operations so that will be the least of our people’s concern. What matters though is the state of the province’s tributaries. We cannot allow the use of our rivers totally unregulated and left to the whims and caprices of the greedy.

This is a job for the Task Force Kalikasan.  We need it to act in Anda and its neighboring towns to protect and preserve the quality of the province’s water resource. Right now, we view the task force as the only potent body that can suit up as the province’s “Greed-busters” for Mother Nature’s sake.

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