The Honduran authorities have launched a plan to recover 25,000 hectares of forest, with an emphasis on areas degraded by fires and illegal logging. The campaign began with the planting of the first 1.5 million tree seedlings in the western provinces of La Paz and Intibucá and in the northeastern Olancho, which have most of the country's environmentally protected areas.

Trinidad Suazo, director of the government's Forest Conservation Institute (ICF), told Tierramérica that those areas also hold the rivers that supply water to El Cajón hydroelectric dam, which provides more than 30 percent of the electricity consumed in Honduras.

The strategy, which also includes community and business participation, is to last two months, with the goal of recuperating the principal protected areas that have suffered destruction.