The National Forest Authority-NFA has launched a campaign of planting 10 million trees to restore the country’s lost forest cover.
Reports by NFA indicate that Uganda’s forest cover across the country tremendously declined from 24 percent (4,933,271 hectares) of land area in the 1990 to less than the current 9 (1,956,664 hectares) percent in 2018.
According to Tom Obong Okello, the Executive Director of NFA, the fact that government has lost about three million hectares of forest in 25 years is very alarming. He says that the campaign is in line with vision 2040.
Okello says the program is to start on Friday at six regional centers which include Mabira, Mbale, Kasyoha Kitomi, Jubia, and Abera Central Forest Reserves.
He noted that the high rate of deforestation has led to habitat loss and species extinction, soil degradation resulting into poor crop yield.
He called upon the members of the public to approach any NFA tree seedling nurseries in the respective regions to access free seedlings for planting on their private land.
According to the Sustainable Development Goal number 13, there is need for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
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