QUITO – Ecuador set a new Guinness reforestation record, with thousands of people pitching in to plant more than 640,000 trees in a single day, President Rafael Correa said.

“This news brings great joy, confirming the environmental commitment” of the administration, Correa said during his weekly recap of accomplishments on Saturday.

Some 44,000 people helped plant trees across the country, Environment Minister Lorena Tapia said.

“Guinness record: 191 parishes, 647,250 plants, 1,997 hectares and we had 44,883 people at #SiembrantonEc. An environmental achievement for the country,” Tapia said in a Twitter post.

The Siembraton, as Saturday’s event was dubbed, aimed to break the Guinness record for number of people participating in a reforestation event featuring the largest variety of trees in a single day at multiple sites.

No one had ever tried to stage a reforestation project on the scale of Ecuador’s, the Guinness World Records representative for Latin America, Carlos Martinez, said earlier this month.

Turkey organized a reforestation project that drew 10,624 people, but the event involved fewer locations.

Tapia said in early May that the government had spent $74 million on reforestation projects since 2008 as part of “a permanent state policy.”

A “zero deforestation” goal has been set for 2017, the environment minister said.