Afforestation projects termed success stories

PESHAWAR: The ‘Billion Tree Afforestation Project’ and ‘10 Billion Tree Tsunami Programme’ were the massive success stories of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Forest Department and a living example of the efforts of the dedicated staff and the local communities, the visiting Saudi delegation was told on Thursday.

“A total of 1000 million trees were grown in the province under Billion Tree Afforestation Project (BTAP) at a cost of Rs 1208 million,” said Muhammad Yousaf Khan, conservator forest Hazara division, while briefing the visiting dignitaries during the visit of the Pakistan Forest Institute here.

Minister Climate Change, Forestry, Environment and Wildlife, Asif Rafiq, secretary of the department, Syed Nazar Hussain Shah, director general PFI, Khalid Ilyas and others were also present on the occasion.

The 1000 million trees included planting and sowing 200 million, which cost Rs311 million, establishing farm forestry with 200 million saplings at a cost of Rs165 million and demarcating enclosures of 600 million trees at a cost of Rs732 million, the forest conservator said.

The delegation of the Saudi government is on an eight-day official visit to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to learn lessons from its massive afforestation drive and implement the same back in their country where they intend to launch a plantation drive of 10 billion trees under ‘Saudi Green Initiative.’

Officials of National Center for Vegetation Cover, Development and Combating Desertification of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are part of the delegation, which is led by Amjid Sadeeqi, a senior official of the department.

Talking to The News, one of the members of the delegation said that their trip was aimed at visiting the areas of the province where plantation was made during the past several years so that they could know the problems and prospects during the execution of the afforestation drive.

The visiting delegates were quite impressed by the work done in KP during the past few years in promotion of forests despite limited resources. The officials of the forest department have so far given a number of briefings to the delegation during the visits to various sites on the scientific forest management right from 1872 till date.

The delegation was also briefed about the forest department’s capacity and its manpower pertaining to raising nurseries, plantation in the context of assistance to Saudi Arabia’s initiative of planting trees on its land.

The delegation has so far visited the natural forest at Galiyat in Abbottabad and various types of plantation made under the provincially funded BTAP and federal government’s Ten Billion Tree Afforestation Program (TBTAP) in Hazara and Peshawar division. They also visited Chandan Garhi near here where thick forest has been grown on 25000 hectares of land under BTAP.

The visited, particularly the block plantation carried out under the dry afforestation techniques, bad land stabilization, and forest nurseries of various forest trees species suitable in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The delegation took keen interest in the forest trees plantation carried out in the southern parts of the province as these forest trees species planted in the topography and climatic condition are identical to Saudi Arabian climatic and topographic conditions.

Sources told The News that after the first visit of a similar Saudi delegation two years back, the Saudi government asked Pakistan to provide experts, who were part of the implementation and execution of the afforestation campaign.

Unfortunately, due to unknown reasons, the Ministry of Climate Change on its own provided personnel who were not part and parcel of the afforestation program. None of them were from KP to have taken part in the execution of the largest afforestation program, sources said.

An expert on forest tree plantation said that KP province has thousands of people having experience in seed collection, sowing, plantation and nursery raising and maintenance. These people have got the skills during the afforestation program of BTAP and TBTAP, he said. The government of Saudi Arabia can take benefits from these experienced hands who have successfully executed the afforestation program.Another delegation with the same objectives will visit KP in the near future, an official of the forest department informed.