Turkey to plant millions of saplings in November

By Enes Duran

ANKARA (AA) - Millions of more saplings will be planted on Nov. 11 in many locations across Turkey as part of the National Forestation Day.

The Agriculture and Forestry Ministry will provide saplings for free to people for this year's plantation campaign, Bekir Karacabey, head of General Directorate of Forestry, told Anadolu Agency on Friday.

Mentioning that the current forested area is 29% in Turkey, he said the goal is to increase it to 30% by 2023.

Touching on the last year's environmental festival that took place on Nov. 11, Karacabey said a total of 13.7 million saplings were planted as part of the first National Forestation Day.

Turkey's massive forestation campaign began with the declaration of Nov. 11 as the National Forestation Day in 2019 that will be marked annually.

"These saplings absorb and store over 300,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually," Karacabey said, referring to the saplings planted last year.