International Day of Forests celebrated with tree planting ceremony at UB Belmopan Campus

The Ministry of Forestry celebrated the International Day of Forests with a tree planting ceremony today in Belmopan. Minister Omar Figueroa and staff from the Forestry Department gathered at U.B. Campus in Belmopan today to plant trees to observe the day. International Day of Forest is celebrated every year on March twenty-first as it is a day that the United Nations uses to raise awareness of the importance of all types of forests. Here’s more from today’s event.

Omar Figueroa, Minister of Forestry

Omar Figueroa

“Forests are really important for each and every Belizean. You know that growing up here in Belize, one thing that we identify with as a people and as a country is our natural environment. And while we have inherited a healthy natural environment, it is now our responsibility to ensure that we pass that on to future generations. And so what we are celebrating here today, the international day of the forest and what we are actually doing out here on the UB grounds, planting a tree, is perhaps the single, easiest way that we can impact the environment. So, I am very proud to be part of and participated in the ceremony and to have actually physically planted a tree here on UB Campus.”

Professor Clement Sankat

Professor Clement Sankat, President, UB

“The theme is really about loving your forests. I am pleased that we have been able to speak to a number of children, high school students from surrounding high schools. We try to inculcate in them the importance of forests for our well-being. As I said to them, can you imagine a world without forests and what we will have? We will have desertification, arid, dry, hot, inhospitable environment not fit for human life. I try to tell them that we cannot take our forest for granted and in Belize we have to protect this forest. In Belize, we have a forest cover of about sixty percent but if we are not very careful, its depletion rate will be increased. It is reducing, slowly and we need to stop that. We cannot take our forests for granted because they are most important for our human well-being; not only people, but our animals and our indigenous people who live in forests, they need it to survive. We can think of so many things that the forest provides.”