The Environment Report

MANILA, Philippines -- Audy Angchangco had wanted so much to be a law enforcer that he sometimes ran after snatchers and petty thieves with an unlicensed gun in hand, friends recalled.

He fulfilled his dream when he joined the Department of Environment and Natural Resources as a special investigator going after illegal loggers and poachers. He was relentless. He was so passionate in carrying out his duties that it cost him his life.

On April 22, a man on a motorcycle shot the 42-year-old Angchangco 11 times as he stepped outside his house in Lucena City to see what the weather was like.

On Tuesday, Angchangco was buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes Cemetery) in Fort Bonifacio and was accorded full military honors -- the first environmentalist to be paid such a tribute.

His wife Helen and their children all wore white as they marched with family, friends and officials of the DENR toward Angchangco’s final resting place, just a few meters from the grave of National Artist NVM Gonzales.

During the necrological service earlier, friends recalled his dedication to his vision and his job.

“He really wanted to be a law enforcer,” said forester Jose Elmer Bacos. “Many times, he went after small-time crooks with an unlicensed firearm,” he said.

As a DENR investigator in Quezon, Angchangco was up early in the morning and waited on the riverbanks for “hot logs” to float downstream.

“It was the first time that I worked with him, and I thought he was just trying to impress me,” said a colleague, Dennis Guerrero.

At around 10 a.m. that day in July last year, Guerrero and Angchangco intercepted more than the usual number of hot logs. Guerrero was ready to pack up and rest, but was startled when Angchangco piped up, “Attorney, there’s still one more. Why don’t we wait for it?”

Hardworking

“I thought he just wanted to show off at the time. But Audy was not like that. He was very hardworking,” Guerrero said.

Just before his murder, Angchangco was working to clamp down on illegal loggers operating in Agusan province.

He was part of the team that implemented the successful “Oplan Baykuran” last year in the Quezon and Rizal portions of the Sierra Madre mountain range.

“Oplan Baykuran” was a massive government anti-illegal logging project last year in the southern Sierra Madre, which resulted in the confiscation of illegally cut logs and cutting paraphernalia worth millions of pesos.

Guerrero described his friend and colleague as a generous fellow with “smiling eyes.”

“He was what I call a happy worker. He was happy doing his work because he was happy with his work,” Asis Perez of Tanggol Kalikasan fondly remembered.

He lived his principles

“I would sometimes kid him, are you really an agent or a cook? Because he was happy doing whatever job was given him, even if it was in the kitchen,” Perez said.

His sister Rose said she had pleaded with her brother not to continue in his job, fearing for his safety.

“But he told me, ‘it is a commitment to my work.’ He lived his principles. That’s the way he was,” she said.

Not even his birthday could stop him from reporting for work. Guerrero recalled that on the eve of Angchangco’s birthday, his office received information of hot logs floating down the river and he went to investigate.

Angchangco took his job so seriously that he became very sensitive if he had the slightest feeling that his superiors had doubts about him.

“If he was unable to apprehend or intercept hot logs, he felt bad. He didn’t want his bosses to think that he was in cahoots with the syndicate,” said Bacos.

34,000 hot logs seized

Through Angchangco’s efforts, his office was able to seize more than 34,000 hot logs in the Sierra Madre area.

“He did not want to give illegal loggers a chance to rest and recover. He was a key figure and one of our most productive special investigators,” Environment Secretary Angelo Reyes said.

Reyes said the murder was meant to scare off his men, but he added, “we are not and will never be intimidated.”

Environment Undersecretary Roy Kyamko said several environmental groups were thinking of putting up a foundation to continue what Angchangco had fought so hard for.

He said that the World Wildlife Fund for Nature had pledged P50,000 for Angchangco’s children to continue their schooling.

“How ironic that an environmental law enforcer became an environmental hero on the day that we had dedicated to the earth,” Kyamko lamented, referring to Earth Day.

But for Bacos, Angchangco never dreamed of being called a hero of the earth from which he came.

“It was not his dream. He just wanted to be a law enforcer,” he said. With reports from Hershey D. Homol and Delfin T. Mallari Jr., Inquirer Southern Luzon