The Forestry Commission (FC) announced that over 22 million tree seedlings were delivered for planting on Green Ghana Day (GGD) on Friday.
Despite the fact that the national goal was to plant 20 million tree seedlings, 22,671,696 seedlings were spread across the country’s 16 regions, with 40.2 percent planted in forest reserves and the remaining 59.8% planted in non-reserve areas.
There were also 55 unique tree species among the roughly 22 million tree seedlings delivered, with 17 million being wood species, three million shade trees, and the rest seedlings being ornamentals and other species.
This was revealed during a post-Green Ghana Day briefing given by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and the Football Club of Ghana in Accra.
According to the FC’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), John Allotey, 12 of the 16 regions met or exceeded their national targets.
The Northern, North-East, and Oti areas, he claimed, were the only ones that fell short of the target set for them.
“We wanted to postpone the exercise in the Northern Region due to a unique situation caused by low weather. Fortunately, the rains fell close to the planting date, so we had no choice but to plant. This could have hampered tree-planting mobilisation “he stated
Mr. Allotey stated that regions who were unable to fulfil their GGD targets would continue to plant tree seedlings in order to meet their goals.
Benito Owusu-Bio, the Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources in charge of Lands and Forestry, described the GGD in 2022 as a huge success.
Mr Owusu-Bio, who is also the Chairman of the Green Ghana Committee, said GH6 million had been released from the government’s GH9.6 million budget for the exercise.
“Apart from the government’s contribution, Corporate Ghana and other institutions also contributed funds to the project. We’re currently getting the numbers together, but we’ll let everyone know how much the project will cost in total “he stated.
He asked members of the public to place a greater emphasis on maintaining the seedlings that had been planted in order to ensure that they survived and matured.
“Now that we’ve completed the GGD on June 10, the most important thing is to ensure that we maintain what we’ve planted.” We must make conscious efforts to water the seedlings, preserve them from harm, avoid fires, and weed around them until they reach maturity.