Imo state government has concluded plans to plant not less than one million trees within the state to help reclaim the environment.
The Commissioner for Environment in the state, Dr Ikay Njoku, disclosed this during an interaction with our correspondent in Owerri.
Njoku, who assured that the tree planting exercise would help to mitigate climate change, also disclosed that the trees to be planted would take up carbon dioxide from the environment for photosynthesis to provide their own food and in the process give out oxygen.
“We are going to put into consideration the type of trees that will stop flooding, their heights and maintenance,” he added.
The commissioner, who disclosed that the ministry’s charge from the government was to protect and improve the environment through water, soil, land, forestry and wild life, assured that the government would be bringing the state owned zoo in Nekede to international standard with a hotel constructed for researchers and visitors by the government’s Dubai partners, adding that the main issue in zoo business was conservation and not just entertainment.
“We conserve the animals in their natural habitat, so that researchers and IT students or students studying wild life and forestry will avail themselves the opportunity to acquire knowledge and get their botanical names during the course of study. Researchers also come there and take the trees to produce medicine and monies are also made from those visits,” he informed.
