The efforts to grow and multiply the endangered ghaf trees at Rawdat al-Ghafat, near Rawdat Rashid has been very successful, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) announced yesterday. The efforts exerted by the Agriculture Affairs Department in co-operation with the Department of Environmental Protection, Natural Reserves, and Wildlife at the MME, as part of the programme to restore Qatari deserts, produced good results in increasing the number of ghaf trees. Around 150 ghaf and related wild tree saplings were planted at Rawdat al-Ghafat.
At the start of the project, the area had only eight ghaf trees that were more than 100 years old with some of them more than 12m high.
The ghaf tree is considered important for Qatari wild plant life as it has been there for many years but due to human intervention and unregulated grazing the number of trees in the desert went down to almost 30 trees at various open areas.
Some old ghaf trees can be seen in the background as workers are engaged in the conservation project.
