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March 2008

Reforestation effort for Greece

In a show of support for areas that have suffered extensive environmental damage due to the devastating forest fires that swept Greece last summer, a group of ‘progreen’ businessmen, international environmentalists and foreign embassy officials have joined forces with the Greek government to reforest the mountain hillsides of Athens. The joint effort began last month at Mount Penteli, the original source of the famous Pentelicon all-white marble with which the 25-century old Acropolis monuments were built.

Among the leaders of the initiative is Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the London-based Greek Cypriot founder and chairman of easyGroup, and among the volunteers are American citizens who flew to Greece at their own expense. The most recent addition to the campaign is ‘Plant your Roots in Greece’, a U.S. and Athens-based organization which operates under the auspices of the World
Council of Hellenes Abroad and the Hellenic American National Council.

The Penteli mountain forests were almost entirely destroyed by a wildfire which swept the area on August 16th, 2007. One man has been formally charged with deliberate arson and has been jailed pending trial. Similar devastation was caused on nearby Mount Parnis, also in the north of Athens, where reforestation is already underway. Much worse followed a week later in the Peloponnese and Evia regions, in the South and East of Greece. More than 70 people were killed, hundreds of homes burnt down or badly damaged and hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and farming land destroyed.

A lot of help has been forthcoming for the worst-hit parts of Greece and the restoration of homes and villages seems to be progressing well, said Sir Stelios after a visit to the burnt-out areas and the former marble quarries of Penteli. But I believe the time has come to pay attention to Mount Penteli because of its significance for the environmental needs of Athenians and for its contribution to global cultural heritage. And if this project goes well, we can then proceed with other areas of Athens and of Greece in general.

The U.S.-based organization ‘Plant your Roots in Greece’ has been involved in reforestation projects throughout Greece since 1999. The next tree planting operation by the Greek American Foundation will take place at one of the most important archaeological sites in the country, the archaeological park of Dion, Pieria, and in Cassandra, Chalkidiki, in cooperation with Friends of Green of Thessaloniki. Recently, it launched a pioneering campaign in the Taygetus mountains, an area of rare ecological value in southern Greece that suffered the worst damage in the country during the summer 2007 blazes.

Our priority is to fund reforestation of the areas devastated by fires in Greece, says Theodore Spyropoulos, Coordinator of the World Council of Hellenes Abroad/USA. The initiative to reforest the Penteli mountains is extremely important to the environment and has considerable symbolic value.

The initiative to focus on the Penteli mountains was taken by a new organization called Independent Reforestation Movement Reforestation Now! It is comprised of a number of historians, fire-fighters, environmentalists, local government officials and Greek and foreign journalists. Their initiative then received the approval of the central government’s Forestry Department.

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