COTABATO CITY (September 27, 2025, Saturday) —- An inter-agency anti-illegal logging team confiscated 1,344 board feet of timber flitches in an operation near a tropical rainforest in Buldon town in Maguindanao del Norte on Friday, September 26.
Bangsamoro regional officials told reporters on Saturday, September 27, that the Lawaan timbers, cut into halves, costing no less than P60,000, were found piled in a grassy area in a secluded barangay in Buldon by combined personnel of the Maguindanao del Norte Provincial Environment, Natural Resources and Energy Office, the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office and a team from the Navy’s Marine Battalion Landing Team-6.
Municipal officials said the men watching over the illegally-cut supposedly protected dipterocarp tree species that they were about to deliver somewhere scampered away when they sensed that the anti-illegal logging team, escorted by personnel of the MBLT-6 under the 1st Marine Brigade, were approaching their location.
They left their chainsaw and plastic containers filled with gasoline as they fled, according to municipal officials who supported the operation that resulted in the seizure of the forest products.
Maguindanao del Norte Gov. Tucao Mastura and the chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Abdulrauf Macacua, separately told reporters on Saturday that they will embark on stringent environment-protection programs that can help protect from poachers the densely forested watershed areas in the adjoining Buldon, Barira and Matanog towns in the province.
Photo shows the timber flitches seized on Friday by an anti-illegal logging team in Buldon, one of the 12 towns in Maguindanao del Norte.
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