Southerners want expansion of a private firm’s bamboo planting project

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March 1, 2026 | 5:25pm

COTABATO CITY — Local executives and big business blocs want the bamboo propagation project of a private firm in a highland town in South Cotabato replicated in the Bangsamoro region and other southern provinces.

Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Talino-Mendoza and the lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Dimacisil Torres, chairman of the influential Bangsamoro Business Council, separately told reporters on Sunday, March 1, that the massive bamboo planting project of the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated (SMI), in the hinterlands in Tampakan, South Cotabato, is a suitable solution to soil erosion.

“Most importantly, it can also generate income for villagers via production of handicraft products using matured bamboo that they can harvest from those plantations,” Mendoza said, referring to SMI’s now popular Bamboo Development Program (BDP) in mountain ranges in Tampakan.

Radio reports over the weekend from Cotabato City, the capital of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and nearby areas in Region 12, stated that employees of SMI and residents of Tampakan planted 600 bamboo seedlings in 2023 in Sitio Kampo Kilot, Barangay Pulabato, in the municipality, achieving a 100% survival rate.

Mendoza, presiding chairperson of the Regional Development Council 12, said reports received last week indicated that SMI employees had also planted thousands more bamboo seedlings across 35 hectares of hillsides in Barangay Tablu, Tampakan, from 2024 to 2025.

Officials from the regional offices of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) 12 and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) 12 in Koronadal City said SMI’s Bamboo Development Project (BDP) aligns well with their agencies’ environmental protection goals.

According to company officials, the BDP is part of SMI’s broader, community-based environmental rehabilitation efforts in Tampakan and neighboring highland towns in South Cotabato.

Torres added that he and members of the regional business council want major private establishments in BARMM’s five provinces and three cities to replicate SMI’s BDP.

“That can be done as a community project of big business establishments in the Bangsamoro region and the environment and natural resources ministry of the Bangsamoro regional government,” Torres, also president of the civilian advisory group of the Police Regional Office–Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, which supports BARMM’s environmental protection initiatives, said.

Mayor Roderick Furigay of Lamitan City in Basilan said on Sunday that he will direct the city’s planning and research personnel to develop a bamboo propagation project in suitable areas, modeled after SMI’s BDP.

“Our local government unit, local business groups, the Bangsamoro regional government and decommissioned members of both the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front can work together in implementing such a project in Lamitan City,” Furigay said.

South Cotabato Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. said the province supports SMI’s BDP and hopes other private firms will replicate the project in areas where they operate.

Tamayo, chairperson of the Regional Peace and Order Council 12, noted that over the past ten years, SMI employees, local officials, and ethnic Blaan communities have planted more than one million forest tree seedlings in South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, and Kiblawan town in Davao del Sur (Region 11) as part of a separate reforestation initiative.