Vice-Premier Wen Jiabao Tuesday urged forestry workers to do a better job in shifting from logging to forest protection at a commemoration ceremony for Ma Yongshun, the "Hero of the Forest."

Wen said afforestation was needed to achieve sustainable development of China's forest resources.

The vice-premier made the remarks at the Great Hall of the People in memory of Ma, a late logger in the northernmost Heilong-jiang Province for his contributions to afforestation.

Vice-Minister of Personnel Zhang Xuezhong read a eulogy for Ma, who received a "Hero of the Forest" award posthumously - the first of its kind in China - by the China National Greening Committee, the Ministry of Personnel and the State Forestry Administration.

Ma Yongshun, born in 1913, began to work as a lumberjack in Heilongjiang's Tieli Forest Centre in 1948. From 1959 until his death on February 10 this year, Ma worked for 40 years planting trees as a volunteer with the help of his family members, leaving behind more than 20 hectares of forest.

Ma set a good example for millions of loggers by stopping tree-cutting and intensifying afforstation to reduce soil and water erosion.

Instead of cutting trees, the traditional work of State-owned forest farms, about 600,000 loggers are turning to tree-planting or protecting and managing existing forests.

Ma Chunhua, Ma's daughter, said her father vowed to plant 35,000 trees in his remaining years to make up for the 35,000 trees he had cut as a lumberjack since the 1940s.