Pakistan has planted a billion trees in just 2 years!

A province in Pakistan has planted a billion trees in just two years as part of an effort to restore forests wiped out by decades of felling and natural disasters such as floods.
The project – dubbed Billion Tree Tsunami – aims to slow down the effects of global warming in Pakistan which ranks in the Top 10 in a list of countries most likely to be affected by the phenomenon.And the effort in the province, which lies in the Hindu Kush mountain range, has surpassed an international commitment after it restored 350,000 hectares of forests and degraded land.

Inger Anderson, director general of IUCN, added: “The Billion Tree Tsunami initiative is a true conservation success story, one that further demonstrates Pakistan’s leadership role in the international restoration effort and continued commitment to the Bonn Challenge.”
Experts at World Wildlife Fund-Pakistan, which is monitoring and auditing the tree-planting effort in Khyber Pakhtunkhaw, say the project has been an environmental, economic and social success, with one of the highest survival rates of trees in the world, ranging from 70 to 90 per cent.“If the trend continues, there will be more birds, there will be more microbes, there will be more insects, so there will be more animals, so more habitats. The ecosystem will kind of literally revive in certain places. There will be more rains because we do need rains,” Hamaad Khan Naqi, WWF-Pakistan’s director general, VOA news reported.

Source: WEF/ The Independent