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Mulanje district to plant 1.8m trees

Mulanje District Council says it will plant 1.8 million tree seedlings in the ongoing 2018/19 National Tree Planting Season.

District forestry officer (DFO) for Mulanje, Eric Mbingwane, told Malawi News Agency (Mana) in an interview on Thursday at the Boma that the council has partnered other stakeholders in the exercise.

Mulanje Mountain is one of the priority areas

He said the trees will be planted across the district with the Mulanje Mountain basin and river banks as the main priority areas.

“We have set 1.8 million trees as our target for this year but we will need support from other sectors to achieve this task because we cannot manage to cover the whole district on our own,” said Mbingwane.

He observed that the target may rise to about 2.5 million trees with the introduction of the Malawi Youth Forestry Restoration Programme.

Mbingwane said through the youth forestry restoration programme, the youth taking part in the initiative pledged to buy and plant about 700 000 tree seedlings.

Mbingwane said government, through the Malawi Youth Forestry Restoration Programme, would be paying the youth to take care of the trees which is an assurance that survival rate would be high.

At least 2.2 million trees were planted during the 2017/2018 National Tree Planting Season which registered a 75 percentage survival rate. n

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