MANILA, Aug. 15 (PNA) — Reforestation under the government’s National Greening Program (NGP) further expanded, covering some 86 percent of the 1.2 million hectares of open, denuded and degraded land government targeted for re-stocking from 2011 up to the first semester of this year.
Latest official data indicate government achieved such feat as Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and its partners were able to reforest during the period a total 1.03 million hectares of NGP land.
Such reforestation involved planting almost 615 million seedlings of indigenous and exotic tree species, the data also show.
Nearly 1.60 million volunteer planters participated in the undertaking, noted DENR.
Government launched NGP in 2011 so reforestation nationwide can be fast-tracked to help promote food security, poverty reduction, environmental stability, biodiversity conservation as well as climate change adaptation and mitigation.
For 2015’s first semester alone, the data show reforestation through NGP covered planting 11.74 million seedlings in 16,258 hectares of land mostly during the April-June period.
The activity involved 12,400 volunteer planters, noted DENR.
Authorities expect NGP planting activities to increase during the rainy season.
DENR spearheads NGP which targets reforesting a total 1.5 million hectares of land by 2016 using an estimated 1.5 billion tree seedlings.
NGP’s annual reforestation targets are 100,000 hectares for 2011, 200,000 hectares for 2012 and 300,000 hectares for each of 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Aside from greening the countryside, the data further show NGP helped generate jobs.
The data show NGP reforestation from 2011 to 2015’s first semester generated some 2.26 million jobs nationwide.
Such activity also employed 320,220 people, DENR said.
Among NGP tasks are site preparation, seedling production and planting as well as maintenance of plantations created.(PNA)