El Avila mountain, which separates the Venezuelan capital from the Caribbean coast and is the center of a national park covering 85,000 hectares, will have 100 million plants cultivated on its slopes as part of the government program known as Misión Arbol (Mission Tree). The goal is reforest 150,000 hectares across Venezuela, where more than 240,000 hectares are deforested annually, according to environmental groups.

The effort will take five years. Meanwhile, environmentalists “will set up a plant nursery as an educational tool and to repopulate the forest on El Avila, in order to expand the project to 43 national parks” covering 13.5 million hectares, Diego Díaz, coordinator of the Vitalis organization, told Tierramérica.

President Hugo Chávez led a day of planting on Jun. 4 for school children and officials. Two thousand seedlings were planted on one side of the mountain. On another side, the volunteers from Vitalis group and the Metropolitan University did the same.