Reuters 5 Jul 08;
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexicans went out and planted more than 8 million trees across the country on Saturday as part of a government push to shed its reputation for environmental mismanagement and rampant illegal logging.
Packs of volunteers, including oil workers and schoolchildren, trekked into fields and forests up and down Mexico wielding shovels and wheelbarrows full of government-supplied saplings. They planted a 8.3 million trees, the environment ministry said.
"We are repairing just a little of the enormous damage that we are doing" to the environment, President Felipe Calderon said at a tree planting event just north of the capital.
Illegal logging destroys some 64,000 acres (26,000 hectares) of Mexican forest each year, the government says, putting Mexico near the top of a U.N. list of nations losing primary forest fastest.
Environmental activists say the figure is much higher.
"Everybody needs to help out a little to keep the world green," said volunteer Marcela Lopez as she patted down soil around a sapling on the west side of Mexico City.
Environmental group Greenpeace called the government-led effort a publicity stunt, saying a better way to keep forests healthy would be to cut back on logging, which is often controlled by the country's powerful organized crime gangs.
"This program is a fraud. Only 10 percent of what is planted survives, which means they are throwing the federal budget for reforestation straight into the garbage," the group said in a statement.
Calderon regularly speaks out against global warming, and the leftwing Mexico City mayor has launched a number of green initiatives to curb rampant pollution in the city, where government fuel subsidies and a lack of public transport mean the roads are permanently choked with cars.
Mexican Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira said the point of the tree planting was to raise environmental consciousness in Mexico, which ecologists also criticize for allowing the oil industry to contaminate many rural states.
"We don't just want a green country. We want to plant trees to nurture environmental conscience," he said.
(Reporting by Mariano Castillo, Rodolfo Pena and Jason Lange, editing by Todd Eastham)
Mexico plants nine million trees in one day: minister
Yahoo News 7 Jul 08;
More than nine million trees were planted in Mexico as part of a day-long campaign against deforestation, the environment minister said Monday.
The day of tree-planting took place on Saturday and aimed to compensate for the 316,000 hectares (780,000 acres) of forest that are lost annually to illegal exploitation, Environment Minister Juan Elvira said.
Mexicans were able to "plant 9,345,000 trees of various types," said Elvira, adding that 507,000 citizens had participated across the country.
Mexico is the fifth leading country in the world in terms of deforestation.
The government launched an ambitious reforestation project in 2007, when 250 million trees were planted, with a goal of 280 million for 2008.
The environmental group Greenpeace has criticized the government, saying it has done little to prevent illegal logging and that deforestation was likely to continue.
