JAMAICA Labour Party Senator and Mayor of Kingston and St Andrew, Desmond McKenzie, on Friday called for the indiscriminate cutting of trees to be made a criminal offence.

McKenzie, who was participating in the Forestry Department’s fifth annual National Tree Planting Day activities at the Hope Botanical Gardens in Kingston, suggested that it was time Jamaicans examine how the absence of trees contributes to natural disasters such as flooding.

“Flooding is not only caused by a little man throwing a mattress in the gully. It is caused by the bad environmental practice which we develop of cutting down trees,” McKenzie said. “I would like the Ministry of Agriculture to push for legislation to make the cutting down of trees a criminal offence.”

Last Friday’s tree planting was organised to highlight the effects of global warming and the importance of trees in slowing climate change.

Also participating in the activities was Marilyn Headley, the Forestry Department’s chief executive officer.

She expressed concerns about the depletion of the country’s natural forestry and said it was imperative that every Jamaican plant at least one tree in this year’s reforestation project in a bid to minimise the effects of global warming.

“The benefits might not be obvious right now, but it is our children who will thank us in the next 20 or so years,” Headley said, pointing to a group of St George’s Primary School students who were in attendance at the ceremony.

She said that hundreds of trees were destroyed during the passage of Hurricane Dean on August 19 and Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and explained that the ministry has been issuing seedlings to the public in an attempt to replace some of the trees that were felled.

“We must say it has been going well. Since the programme started in 1998 we have issued over 800,000 seedlings and have had as many as 15,000 participants in the project,” Headley said. “We have even started a private replanting project, where owners of private forest lands declare portions of it to the forestry department which is used for reforestation.”

She, however, said that persons were more interested in planting fruit trees because they provide food.

National Tree Planting Day is an annual observance aimed at increasing the number of trees covering the island and conserving that 30 per cent of the island classified as forests.

On Friday, members of the public were issued shovels to plant seedlings such as the lignum vitae in designated areas of the Hope Botanical Gardens.

The gardens, once home to a variety of trees, is gradually being restored to its former beauty.

Trees such as the golden poiciana, the flame of the flower and the silky oak, which is used to build furniture because of its texture, have for the most part vanished from the gardens.