TOWARD the end of last month, Manila residents were horrified at the sight of rows of foot-long stumps on what used to be a tree-lined stretch of Quirino Avenue. At least 225 trees, most of them decades old, had been cut down, including a heritage Narra tree that was over 50 years old.
These mature canopy trees had provided shade, reduced heat, and helped absorb floodwaters on Quirino Avenue for generations. Now, in the midst of a period of extreme heat, all that was gone.
Stupefyingly, this massive ecological damage was done with the blessings of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
The tree removal is part of the preconstruction clearing for San Miguel Corp.’s (SMC) Southern Access Link Expressway (SALEx) project, a 40.62-kilometer elevated public-private partnership toll road designed to link the skyway network to Roxas Boulevard and the New Manila International Airport in Bulacan. The DENR had given SMC the go-ahead to chop down 617 trees along the 3.9-km stretch of Quirino Avenue. Out of these trees, SMC said only 94 were earmarked for earth-balling, or excavating and transplanting them elsewhere. And of these, only 30 have been successfully relocated.
In the face of intense public outrage, the DENR temporarily halted the tree-cutting to review the project’s permits, though the agency initially defended the move by claiming many of the cut trees had “defects” and would be offset by the planting of 50,700 replacement seedlings of indigenous forest species.
But scientific studies have consistently shown that saplings cannot replace mature trees. While planting young trees is vital for the future, a sapling takes decades to replicate the massive environmental, structural and biological benefits that a single mature tree provides today.
The DENR is now said to be studying which of the remaining 392 trees can be saved by earth-balling rather than cutting, but the agency’s recent track record provides little reason for optimism.
In Cebu, amid severe flooding and soil erosion caused by a typhoon in late 2025, investigations revealed massive environmental violations at the 140-hectare Monterrazas de Cebu hillside development. A post-disaster inventory revealed that developers had illegally cut down over 700 trees and failed to maintain required stormwater retention ponds. It was a clear case of oversight failure, as the DENR had granted the project an Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC), but failed to monitor or enforce its safety and forestry conditions until it was too late.
In Palawan, the DENR granted a tree-cutting and earth-balling permit to the Berong Nickel Project, authorizing the cutting of 26,617 mature trees.
In South Cotabato, the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project is actively clearing vast tracts of upland forest to move into its commercial production phase. But a major scandal erupted when DENR Region 12 refused to disclose the exact number of trees authorized to be cut down. In response to freedom of information (FOI) requests filed by local communities, journalists, and the Diocese of Marbel, the DENR invoked its “List of Exceptions” (nondisclosure of information), claiming that details and supporting documents submitted by mining clients are confidential. This lack of transparency has led local government units and environmentalists to petition the Supreme Court, accusing the DENR of intentionally shielding the mining firm from public scrutiny while thousands of trees are cleared in ancestral domains and vital watersheds.
Established through Executive Order 192, the DENR is mandated to conserve, manage, develop and oversee the proper use of the country’s environment and natural resources. Unfortunately, these recent examples show it is more keenly focused on the last two of these responsibilities at the expense of conservation and proper management.
Indeed, many environmental and civil society groups now see the agency as a permit-granting office, rather than an aggressive protector of the country’s ecosystems. This can be traced, in part, to the agency’s two inherently contradictory mandates: environmental protection on one hand and resource utilization and economic development on the other.
It doesn’t help that the DENR doesn’t conduct the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required for the issuance of an ECC. Instead, the private developer or mining company hires and pays third-party environmental consultants to write it. But these consultants know that if their report concludes that a project is too dangerous and shouldn’t be built, they won’t get hired again. This results in reports that minimize potential risks, gloss over ecological vulnerabilities, and present the project in the best possible light.
Unless these structural flaws within the DENR are addressed, resource usage would likely continue to take precedence over environmental protection. Public vigilance can tip the balance from time to time, but it is an uphill battle with potentially disastrous results, if the fight is not won.
