Mexico plants eight million trees

Mexicans went out and planted more than eight million trees across the country during the weekend as part of a government push to shed its reputation for environmental mismanagement and rampant illegal logging.

Packs of volunteers, including oil workers and schoolchild- ren, 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 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.

Illegal logging destroys some 64,000 acres 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 government-led 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 10 per cent of what is planted survives, which means they are throwing the federal budget for reforestation straight into the garbage," the group said in a statement.

Mr Calderon regularly speaks out against global warming, and the leftwing Mexico City mayor has launched a number of green initiatives to curb rampant pollution in the city, where government fuel subsidies and a lack of public transport mean the roads are permanently choked with cars.