Replanting the burned Greek forests

Posted on January 9, 2008 by grpresspoland

SEEDS OF HOPE >>> Drive to Reforestation

The replanting of burnt pine forests on Mount Penteli, north of Athens, is to begin on Sunday, January 13, in a reforestation drive backed mainly by Greek-American and Cypriot ‘pro-green’ businesspeople based abroad. The initiative to reforest areas of Athens stricken by last summer’s destructive fires was launched last autumn. The most recent addition features ‘Plant your Roots in Greece’, a U.S. and Athens-based organisation which operates under the auspices of the World Council of Hellenes Abroad (SAE) and the Hellenic American National Council. The organisation has been very active in Greece since 1999, and is planning a second round of tree plantings during 2008 at the archaeological site of Dion, Pieria, northern Greece, and on the Cassandra peninsula, Halkidiki, northern Greece, which was devastated by wildfires in 2006.Deputy Agriculture Minister Kostas Kiltidis will partake in Sunday’s tree-planting drive along with representatives of the two organisations with volunteers from Greece, local mayors and municipal councillors and senior staff from the British embassy in Athens.
Mount Penteli in Athens was chosen as the starting point for these reforestation drives because of its symbolic importance as the source of marble quarried during antiquity to build the Parthenon temple atop the Acropolis as well as its importance for the environment in the congested, greater Athens area.
Athens News Agency: Expats back Penteli reforestation