CENRO saves trees through surgery

By John Noel E. Herrera

The Iloilo City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) conducted surgery on some old or damaged trees in the city to prolong their lives instead of cutting them down.

Tree surgery is the process of making a sick or damaged tree well again, which involves a wide variety of methods, including removing of diseased branches of a tree, filling cavities to prevent further damage and supporting the trees’ branches with braces.

CENRO chief Engr. Niel Ravena said that they performed the procedure to heal the damaged or infected parts and prevent them from dying.

Ravena added that they first conducted the operation on the Molave Tree in Plaza Libertad and the Narra tree in Sunburst Park, noting that it is part of the city government’s campaign to protect and preserve the old trees despite all the modernization programs in the metro.

“CENRO continues to maintain Plaza Libertad. Tree Surgery is done to ensure that trees are taken care of and kept healthy,” CENRO said on its Facebook page.

CENRO is currently doing the inventory of old trees in the city to know if they have damage and if they need surgery as well, according to Ravena.

Some employees of CENRO have also undergone tree surgery training to learn the process and for them to perform the surgery on other identified trees in the city.

Meanwhile, the CENRO have already started to remove “invasive” trees from public plazas which they would replace with native trees, as part of the city government’s rehabilitation project of all the plazas in Iloilo City.