Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Reforestation in Northern Venezuela

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

CARACAS, Sep 12 2005 (IPS) - Venezuela initiated a program for the recovery in eight years of up to 400,000 hectares of forest in the areas to the north of the Orinoco River, with the planting of 92 million trees, announced Environment Minister Jacqueline Faría. The project begins this year with the creation of 40 tree nurseries with the capacity to grow 11 million seedlings, and the expansion of 46 existing nurseries, Faría said.

“We aren't doing much with reforestation of 50 to 150,000 hectares a year, while we are tolerating the deforestation of up to a million hectares a year,” Miguel Ortega, an environmentalist and agronomy professor at the Central University, told Tierramérica.

More than half of Venezuela is forested area, but the vast majority is south of the Orinoco, and faces deforestation at a rate of 500,000 to one million hectares annually.