Among the leaders of the initiative is Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the London-based Greek Cypriot founder and chairman of easyGroup, which among others includes easyJet, easyCruise and easyHotels. And among the volunteers are American citizens flying in from Greece at their own expense.

    The most recent addition to the campaign is ‘Plant your Roots in Greece’, a U.S. and Athens-based organization which operates under the auspices of the World Council of Hellenes Abroad and the Hellenic American National Council.

   At the center of their current attention are the mountains of Penteli in the north of Athens, the quarries of which provided the giant marble slabs that were transported some 20 miles and then hoisted atop the Acropolis hill in central Athens over the ten-year period 447-438 BC. In what is acknowledged worldwide as a rare example of ancient architectural genius, the marble was sculpted in fine detail to form a large group of imposing temples, the most famous of which is the Parthenon.

    The Acropolis monuments are still visited by millions of tourists, since they constitute Greece’s main archeological and historical attraction.

   The Penteli mountain forests were almost entirely destroyed by a wildfire which swept the area on August 16th, 2007. One man has been formally charged with deliberate arson and has been jailed pending trial.

    Similar devastation was caused on nearby Mount Parnis, also in the north of Athens, where reforestation is already underway. Much worse followed a week later in the Peloponnese and Evia regions, in the South and East of Greece. There, more than 70 people were killed, hundreds of homes burnt down or badly damaged and hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and farming land destroyed.

   “A lot of help has been forthcoming for the worst-hit parts of Greece, and the restoration of homes and villages seems to be progressing well,” said Sir Stelios after a visit to the burnt-out areas and the former marble quarries of Penteli. “But I believe the time has come to pay attention to Mount Penteli because of its significance for the environmental needs of Athenians and for its contribution to global cultural heritage. And if this project goes well, we can then proceed with other areas of Athens and of Greece in general”. 

 Sir Stelios concluded: "I am delighted that I can be of some help in this worthwhile effort. I hope that the time I will devote to this project, as well as some initial financial support that I have pledged, will act as a catalyst to encourage others to help with the reforestation of Athens”.

    The U.S.-based organization ‘Plant your Roots in Greece’ has been involved in reforestation projects throughout Greece since 1999. The next tree planting operation by the Greek‐American Foundation will take place at one of the most important archaeological sites in the country, the archaeological park of Dion, Pieria, and in Cassandra, Chalkidiki in cooperation with “Friends of Green of Thessaloniki”. Most recently, it launched a pioneering campaign in the Taygetus mountains, an area of rare ecological value in southern Greece that suffered the worst damage in the country during the summer 2007 blazes. The organization now will also focus its attention on the mountains around Athens, a historic city that is over-populated and over-polluted due to traffic congestion and other contributing factors and therefore badly in need of woodlands.

   “Our priority is to fund reforestation of the areas devastated by fires in Greece,” says Mr. Theodore Spyropoulos, Coordinator of the World Council of Hellenes Abroad / USA. “The initiative to reforest the Penteli mountains is extremely important to the environment and has considerable symbolic value since it was the primary source of the white marble used for the construction of the Parthenon and the surrounding temples, which are the foremost monuments of ancient Greek civilization”.

   The initiative to focus on the Penteli mountains, and especially the devastated forests near the white marble quarries that supplied the Acropolis monuments, was taken by a new organization called ‘Independent Reforestation Movement – Reforestation Now!’ It is comprised of a number of historians, fire-fighters, environmentalists, local government officials and Greek and foreign journalists. Their initiative then received the approval of the central government’s Forestry Department.

   The first phase of reforestation, with the planting of thousands of young pine trees by Greek and foreign volunteers, is starting on the slopes of Mount Penteli this Sunday, January 13th. Present on behalf of the Greek government will be Alternate Minister of Agricultural Development Costas Kiltides, who will be planting trees himself along  with Sir Stelios, with senior British embassy officials, American representatives of ‘Plant Your Roots in Greece’, local mayors, and hundreds of volunteers.