Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Readying for Reforestation

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

CARACAS, Apr 12 2010 (IPS) - Venezuela's Environment Ministry announced that it will finalize resources for the Tree Mission, a reforestation program for river headwater areas begun in 2006, and now intended to recover national parks affected by the fires resulting from the drought that has lasted since 2009. The president of the National Parks Institute, Leonardo Millán, told Tierramérica that “between December and march there were 550 fires, triple the total from a year ago, and which destroyed 25,000 hectares of forest in national parks, primarily in Canaima (east), Henri Pittier and Waraira Repano (north).”

Ávila, or Waraira Repano, includes the mountains that separate Caracas from the Caribbean Sea. Of its 85,000 hectares, 1,500 have been destroyed by 75 fires in the last few months. The situation began to improve in April with the arrival of dense fog and drizzle from the south.