Trouble in paradise
Nacha Cattan, The (Mexico City) News:
A nonprofit group that is helping carry out a national reforestation effort acknowledged Friday that the federal program lacks planning and that 40 percent of hundreds of millions of trees planted last year have already died.
Pronatura Mexico said that the multi-million-dollar ProArbol initiative at times provides saplings too late in the season, or delivers them to communities before they are mature enough to be planted.
Launched by the Calderón administration, the program came under attack this week after El Universal revealed that top ProArbol officials are being investigated for corruption.
Greenpeace also dismissed ProArbol as a superficial measure to combat Mexico’s devastating deforestation rate…
True enough, but then again, aren’t conservative administrations SUPPOSED to contract government services to inefficient corrupt cronies ? Anyway, ProArbol is not the only tree-planter, and 60% of their trees are still alive.
The Mex Files 
Yeah,
I was thinking before that tree planting and re-forestation is not a “cookie-cutter” kind of job. It also has to be the right kind of tree in the right place, and as you have pointed out, care must be taken in the growing and planting. It takes some skill. Native varieties are best in most cases.
It doesn’t cut the mustard to clearcut a rainforest, and re-plant to palm oil trees. Here in Vermont it would do more harm than good to re-plant cleared ground with some foreign variety. It is best to cut in such a way that the native trees re-grow themselves.
Like many things, always more complicated and difficult than it first seems.