Protecting the forest is Leyte boxer's toughest fight

MAASIN CITY, Southern Leyte - Against the advice of his parents, Mark Cadabos gave up farming and left his hometown in Southern Leyte at the tender age of 12 to pursue a boxing career in Manila in 2001. Fortunately for the young boy, he landed a spot and came under the tutelage of professional boxers at the Tiger City Boxing Stable in Mandaluyong City. For almost a decade, everything went as Cadabos had planned, until news of his father's death forced him to return here, to their small farming village of Lunas in the provincial capital of Maasin City. With their breadwinner gone, Cadabos - now 22 years old - was left with the responsibility of attending to the needs of their family. He still occasionally fights in local matches in the province, but he never expected he would end up turning to the very practice he abandoned a decade ago for income: forest farming. Cadabos is one of the more than 100 forest farmers belonging to a local people's organization, the Youth Innovators for Social and Environmental Development Association (YISEDA), which is protecting the Nacolod Mountain Range, locally called the "San Francisco Nature's Park." Click here to view full screen No different from his exhausting boxing schedule in Manila, Cadabos starts each day by trekking to the foot of the 1,900-foot high mountain as early as 7 a.m. Six days a week, he brandishes a machete and lugs a hand-woven basket containing seedlings on his back as he makes a calculated ascent. He negotiates the slippery slopes, leaps over treacherous ravines, avoids sharp rocks, and endures bee stings in order to cultivate sections of arable land and plant seedlings in denuded areas. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has awarded their group some 400 hectares of forest land to protect for 25 years, with technical assistance from the government and funding from local governments and the German development agency Deutsche Gesellshaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The project aims to institute effective sustainable forest management in the mountain range, warding off illegal loggers and kaingin farmers while restoring the forest land with a variety of trees like Lauan, Acacia, and Sagimsiman. In a 2006 report, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization said the Philippines lost around 157,000 hectares of forest annually from 2000 to 2005. Until last year, the country was still losing forests at the rate of 150,000 hectares per year, according to Dr. Bernd-Markus Liss of the GIZ. In exchange for protecting the forest, the farmers gain the right to harvest trees while planting new seedlings in their place, in specially designated plantation areas on the slopes of the mountain range. At the same time, YISEDA members are taught proper agro-forestry, planting fruit-bearing trees, vegetables, and root crops that provide them with a steady source of income. Also, Cadabos' community contributes in a huge way to easing the greenhouse effect that warms the planet through a global strategy known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation-plus (REDD+). Boxing takes a backseat Cadabos was planting seedlings near a mountain peak when our group of journalists from Manila visited the project site one rainy Thursday morning. He volunteered to assist us as we made the steep descent from the mountain. He candidly told GMA News Online that he still intends to return to Manila to revive his abandoned boxing dream in the future. "Labing-pitong panalo [17 wins]," he says when asked about his career, "at apat na talo [And four losses]." Referring to the famous boxing venue of most of his idol Manny Pacquiao's matches, he confesses, “Sana dumating din ang araw na ako naman ang lalaban sa Las Vegas." [I hope someday I can also fight in Las Vegas] But that dream is still far away, Cadabos admits. For now, he is focusing his attention to the needs of the mountains surrounding their small village. On this particular day, he is potting prepared seedlings to meet his group's daily quota of 10,000 seedlings. Their target is to pot a total of 120,000 plants in two weeks' time, all for the meager allowance of P120 a day or a total of only P1,440 for the entire endeavor. "Okay lang kahit mahirap, kami din naman makikinabang niyan kapag tumagal [It doesn't matter if this job requires hard labor because villagers here like me are the ones who will benefit from this anyway when the time comes]," he says. After ensuring that all the visitors have safely made their way down, the young boxer-farmer politely asks if we didn't mind him going back up the mountain to return to his farming duties. Cadabos gives a small nod to the journalists, turns around, and disappears behind the trees. Back in the mountain, he will face another of his life’s battles which, despite being the toughest for him, he also finds the most rewarding. In this battle, unlike in his boxing stints, there are no tallies for wins and losses. There is only victory. Photos by Joe Galvez / Additional Photo by Mark Merueñas - GMA News RELATED ARTICLES: