Gov’t supports reforestation

Friday, 25 October 2013 01:10
thenews.com.mx

 
Rural communities in Durango will receive monetary incentives to reforest the arid northern state and engage in sustainable forestry, a state government press release announced on Wednesday.

Durango Gov. Jorge Herrera Caldera and National Forest Commission (Conafor) Director Jorge Rescala Pérez announced 670 sustainable forestry projects will be launched in 27 rural communities and 313 parcels of private land around the state as part of the National Forest Program.

According to Herrera Caldera, these projects, which will promote sustainable lumber harvesting, reforestation efforts and research into sustainable forestry practices in communal farms and private land, will cost 25.4 million pesos ($1.9 million), 33 percent of the National Forest Program’s 69.7-million-peso budget.

Adrián Valles Martínez, director of the Natural Resources and the Environment Secretariat, said that the funding was provided as a result of an agreement signed on Feb. 22 between the Conafor and the Durango state government to plant trees, conserve existing forests and restore environmental services.

Rescala Pérez said that these projects are in line with the strategy of the federal government to make sustainable use of forest resources, which he added will contribute to improving the social and economic conditions for people who live in rural areas.

Herrera Caldera thanked President Enrique Peña Nieto for his efforts to help restore Durango’s forests, which have been damaged in recent years by a variety of factors, from the intense, three-year drought to recurrent forest fires and plagues that have affected many rural communities and private lands.

This past August, 381,172 hectares of pine forests in the state’s Durango, San Dimas, Guanaceví, Santiago Papasquiaro and Canatlán municipalities were affected by a plague of bark beetles. The plague was finally brought put under control at a cost of 52 million pesos, 40 million pesos of which was provided by the federal government and the rest by the state government.

THE NEWS