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Mexico City: Mexicans went out and planted more than eight million trees across the country on Saturday as part of a governmental "green project" to shed its reputation for environmental mismanagement and rampant illegal logging.
Packs of volunteers, including oil workers and schoolchildren, trekked into fields and forests up and down Mexico wielding shovels and wheelbarrows full of government-supplied saplings. They planted a 8.3 million trees, the environment ministry proudly said.
"We are repairing just a little of the enormous damage that we are doing" to the environment, President Felipe Calderon said at a tree planting event just north of the capital.
Destroyed forests
Illegal logging destroys some 26,000 hectares of Mexican forest each year, the government says, putting Mexico near the top of a UN list of nations losing primary forest fastest.
Environmental activists say the figure is much higher.
"Everybody needs to help out a little to keep the world green," said volunteer Marcela Lopez as she patted down soil around a sapling on the west side of Mexico City.
Environmental group Greenpeace called the effort a publicity stunt, saying a better way to keep forests healthy would be to cut back on logging, which is often controlled by the country's powerful organised crime gangs.
"This programme is a fraud. Only ten per cent of what is planted survives, which means they are throwing the federal budget for reforestation straight into the garbage."
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