Phu Tho succeeds in sustainable forest rehabilitation
Forest cover in the locality increased from
35.9 percent in 2000 to 50 percent in 2012, contributing to preventing
disasters, protecting the environment and regulating water resources.
The project also helped encourage the participation of local
communities in forest management, contributing to reducing poverty and
improving the livelihood of local tree planters, according to the
provincial forestry department.
The tree-planting project
also created jobs for almost 23,000 households in many localities in the
province, thus developing forest planting and processing zones in the
province.
Through growing indigenous plants and non-timber
trees in Thanh Son and Tan Son districts over the past three years, the
project contributed to increasing the locality’s forestry production
value to about 350 billion VND (about 16.6 million USD) per year,
accounting for 12 percent of the province’s total agro-forest and
aquaculture production value.
The project was carried out in
Thanh Son and Tan Son districts, mostly by farmers from the Muong and
Dao ethnic groups who had taken over the management of 1,000 ha of
degraded natural forest.
The planting forest has a total
budget of 586,000 USD, of which the Asia- Pacific Network for
Sustainable Forest Management and Rehabilitation (APFNet) has provided
around 500,000 USD.
The project has been organised by the
provincial Department of Agricultural and Rural Development, with
technical assistance from the Forest Science Institute of Vietnam.-VNA