Volunteers have rallied to get involved in a massive tree planting campaign and have planted some 445 million trees in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region since 2012, local authorities announced on March 11.

Officials said that since 2012 Inner Mongolia has accelerated its push to afforestation, actively encouraging residents to participate in tree planting activities, and has built voluntary tree planting centers in all the cities and leagues in the region.

Since the implementation of the voluntary tree planting activities in 1981, millions of residents in Inner Mongolia have got involved. Officials said that as a result, a total of 1.7 billion trees have been planted, and over 3,500 voluntary tree planting bases have been established at various levels, covering an area of more than 400,000 hectares.