Another year of Arbor Day
Arbor Day is a festival that publicizes and protects trees in accordance with the law, and organizes and mobilizes the masses to actively participate in the activities of tree planting. According to the length of time, it can be divided into tree-planting day, tree-planting week and tree-planting month, which are collectively called International Arbor Day. It is advocated that through this kind of activities, people's enthusiasm for afforestation will be stimulated and they will realize the importance of environmental protection.
China's Arbor Day was initiated by Ling Daoyang, Han An, Pei Yili and other forest scientists in 1915, and the time was initially set on the annual Qingming Festival. In 1928, the National Government changed the Arbor Day to March 12 to commemorate the third anniversary of Sun Yat-sen's death. In 1979, after the founding of New China, at the suggestion of Deng Xiaoping, the sixth meeting of the Standing Committee of the Fifth National People's Congress decided that March 12 every year would be my country's Arbor Day.
In ancient China, there was a tradition of planting willows and trees during the Qingming Festival. The earliest roadside tree planting in history was pioneered by a man named Wei Xiaokuan from Shaanxi more than 1,400 years ago. Wei Xiaokuan (508-580 AD) was a famous general in the Western Wei and Northern Zhou Dynasties, from Jingzhao Duling (now southeast of Xi'an). According to the fifty-second record in the biography of Li Yanshou's "Northern History" of Tang Dynasty, in the second year of the abolition of the emperor in the Western Wei Dynasty (AD 552), Wei Xiaokuan was awarded the prefect of Yongzhou for his military exploits. Since ancient times, an earthen platform has been set on the side of the road every one li on the official road as a marker to calculate the mileage of the road, which is the current milestone. After Wei Xiaokuan took office, he found that the soil platform had many shortcomings. After being exposed to the wind and the sun, especially the rain, it was easy to collapse. It needed to be repaired frequently. inconvenient. After investigation and understanding, Wei Xiaokuan resolutely ordered that all the places where soil platforms were set on official roads in Yongzhou should be replaced by a locust tree. This not only does not lose its marking and metering function, but also provides protection from the wind and rain for pedestrians, and does not require repairs. This approach of Wei Xiaokuan is undoubtedly a major move to benefit Sangzi, reduce the burden on the people in his hometown, and benefit the country and the people.
In modern times, especially since the reform and opening up, a voluntary tree-planting campaign with the largest scale, the largest number of participants and the most remarkable results has been carried out in China for more than 40 years. For many years, the leaders of the Party and the state, no matter how busy they are with work, whether in Beijing or in other places, have conscientiously fulfilled the obligation of citizens to plant trees. Statistics show that since the nationwide voluntary tree-planting campaign was launched in 1982, more than 10.4 billion people in China have participated in voluntary tree-planting, and a total of 49.2 billion voluntary trees have been planted.
The nationwide voluntary tree planting campaign has strongly promoted the improvement of China's ecological conditions. In 1981, before the start of this movement, China's forest area was 1.729 billion mu, the stock of standing trees was 10.26 billion cubic meters, and the forest coverage rate was 12%. After years of unremitting efforts, China's forest area has reached 2.62 billion mu, the stock of standing trees has reached 13.618 billion cubic meters, and the forest coverage rate has increased to 18.21%. Under the circumstance that the world's forest resources are decreasing day by day, China realizes the continuous growth of forest resources. The improvement of forest vegetation status not only beautifies the homeland, reduces the damage of soil erosion and sandstorm to farmland, but also effectively improves the carbon storage capacity of the forest ecosystem.