Extensive wildfires in Macedonia over the past two summers destroyed millions of trees, but the hills and forests of this Balkan country will be green again before too long. Thousands of Macedonians came together in a major reforestation drive, and planted six million trees in a single day.
From Reuters:
“Our goal is to make Macedonia “greener” and make people more aware of the needs of this planet,” said Macedonian opera singer Boris Trajanov, who initiated the project.
Thousands of people were bused to the planting sites, including more than 1,000 soldiers who planted some 200,000 seedlings at 14 sites.
“Just as we take care of our homes, we should take care of our planet,” said Silvana, boarding a bus with her two children. “We have no other place to live, that’s why I’m going.”
Trajanov told Reuters he hoped to spread the campaign across the whole Balkan region next year.
“If Macedonia, a country of two million people, can plant six million trees, we can only imagine how many trees can be planted in other, bigger countries,” he said.
Six million trees in a single day – that’s really impressive. Pretty inspiring to see so many people come together for the purpose of beautifying their country and repairing damage to the environment. And, this wasn’t even the first time – back in March, they planted 2 million trees, symbolizing one for each citizen in the nation. Imagine how much good we could do if even a fraction of the citizens of every other nation in the world followed suit!
Link [Reuters] via [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Balkan Analysis
