Rizal’s Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office, thru Assistant Protected Area Superintendent (APASu) Forester Zosima Belen and Forester Aida Ceniza of Hinulagang Taktak Protected Landscape (HTPL) and Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape (UMRBPL) respectively, conducted trainings on DENR Administrative Order 2013-30 or the Revised Guidelines on the Survey and Registration of Protected Area Occupants (SRPAO) to jumpstart the census for the areas. 

Top: Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape

Bottom: Hinulugang Taktak Protected Landscape

 

SRPAO is being conducted in protected areas to provide the basis for the recognition of tenured migrants. To establish the official list of male and female household heads/heads of the family. To determine their actual number, the location, boundaries, and extent of the area occupied, as well as resource use of the protected area occupants and other entities. Enumerators will ascertain the period of occupancy of the protected area occupants.

Tenured Migrants are communities within protected areas that have actually and continuously occupied such areas for five (5) years before the designation of the same as protected areas under the NIPAS Act.

Based on a field survey conducted from November 2011 to December 2013, Marikina Watershed has 1,346 tenured migrants and 2,066 non-tenured migrants within its nine (9) barangays. While HTPL surveyed ten (10) qualified tenured migrants and seven (7) non-tenured migrants in 2010.

The updating of the SRPAO shall be used as input to the UMRBPL and HTPL area management zoning and planning; and will serve as the baseline in monitoring the increase in the number of migrants, and for other financing mechanisms. ###