Inner Mongolia autonomous region-based Elion Resources Group mobilized over 10,000 employees, farmers and environmentalists to plant nearly 200,000 trees in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Hebei and Ningxia to celebrate the 46th Earth Day on April 22.
Varieties such as liquorice, Salix mongolica and Populous euphratica were among the trees planted. The day's tree planting kicked off the group's green and ecological recovery initiative in 2015, which aims to restore 100,000 hectares of degraded land.
Earlier this year, Elion and its business partners established the Greening Silk Road Fund, planning to plant 1.3 billion trees in ecologically vulnerable regions along the Silk Road over the next 10 years.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) posted Elion's tree-planting news on its official website on April 23 to draw more attention on the Earth.
On July 22, 2014, the secretary-general of the UNCCD paid a visit to Inner Mongolia's Kubuqi Desert and commented that Elion's ecological recovery achievement in the desert was "unbelievable".