Fearing a further depletion of their country's forest cover, the Kenya Wildlife Services is continuing a quirky tree-planting initiative, urging young citizens to go out and plant the number of trees equal to their age.
"Every school going child and every adult, whichever age, should plant a tree wherever they are. If you are five years old plant five trees. We have done a lot of damage to our environment and it is upon us to restore what we have destroyed," Nicholas Okeya, a spokesman for Green Africa Foundation, told CapitalFM.
Volunteers with the Green Africa Foundation planted 9,500 trees in April as part of the Plant Your Age initiative, which was promoted via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Recently, they planted another 10,000 more, all in an effort to combat deforestation in Kenya.
"The trees that we planted are doing well so we thought it would be best if forge ahead and get more young men to join in because they youths are the majority in this country and they need to care for the environment," Green Africa Foundation Secretary Francis Musumba told CapitalFM.
Reforestation efforts in Kenya are not new. One of the most well-known drives to plant trees there was led by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai, better known as "The Tree Lady," who died in September 2011. Her Green Belt Movement, started in 1977, helped replant some 20-30 million trees throughout Africa and continues to inspire reforestation projects.
