Volunteers Plant Trees in Machaca Forest
Volunteers got their hands dirty this morning in the Machaca Forest Reserve. The Ministry of Sustainable Development and the Ya’axche Conservation Trust brought them together to plant trees on degraded land inside the reserve, the start of a longer project to restore it. Here is more from the event.

Christina Garcia
Christina Garcia, Executive Director, Ya’axche Conservation Trust
“Our aim today is to put down a hundred and ninety trees within degraded lands already identified in the reserve. The project overall, which has a contribution from the IUCN is to basically restore degraded areas within the reserve. Our aim is to restore at least two hundred hectares within the area, but of course this will be done on a gradual process because today we have these volunteers that will help us put these trees in the ground. But the objective is to restore two hundred hectares of degraded land.”

Milagro Matus
Milagro Matus, CEO, Ministry of Sustainable Development
“We have program that we are intending to do reforestation of over two thousand trees. We have volunteers from different schools, organizations here to help us with the planting, all in an effort to make Belize a greener, cleaner place.”
Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.
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