Samoa redoubles tree planting effort

Samoa's government is midway through an environmental project to plant two million trees by the year 2020.

The forests are under increasing threats from climate change to unsustainable land use and coastal erosion.

The Ministry of Natural Resources' Moafanua Tolusina Pouli said a variety of trees were grown as seedlings into tree saplings in a number of nurseries for planting.

He said his team at the forestry division was working closely with community groups and landowners and other departments to plant trees in different venues nationwide.

"We are leading this campaign because we are promoting tree planting in all sorts of forestry landscape and we are also coordinating and bringing together all our stakeholders as well as the community in line with our national programme on forest conservation and forest development."

Moafanua Tolusina Pouli said an earlier effort to plant one million trees was a such a success they wanted to plant more trees this time.