Meet the man who turned barren land to Tropical Forest through a 37-year process

While for most of us, maintaining a tiny home garden is a herculean task, but this man here single-handedly planted and nurtured a whole wasteland into a blooming tropical forest over a period of 37 years.

Jadav Molai Payeng grew up in Majuli Island in India, where there was once a flourishing oasis supporting wildlife and as people began cutting the trees making up the oasis, the land began to go barren.

He was 16 when a massive flood in Assam devastated the green cover. As a result, Jadav noticed, wildlife like migratory birds, snakes and other animals were rapidly disappearing.

Payeng witnessed this transformation, and decided to do something about it. He took his concern to his village elders who told him that since the green cover was disappearing, the animals were losing their habitat. And creating new forest areas was the only solution to save these animals.

Worried by the loss of the flora and fauna he was witnessing, Jadav approached the Assam forest department. This, as expected, proved of no help. Instead, they asked him to plant tree himself. Little did the administration know that Jadav would do exactly what they told him to!

At the young age of 16, Jadav started this next to impossible task. He started by planting a sapling on a riverine island, on the banks of River Brahmaputra. He continued with the act of planting a sapling every day for the next 30 long years.

The area was vast, and Jadav was at least hundreds of men less to water the saplings. But he didn’t stop. He built a bamboo platform on the top of each sapling and placed earthen pots with small holes in them. Water continuously dripped on the saplings for weeks through the holes before eventually emptying.

In 1980, he joined hands with the social forestry division of Golaghat district for a scheme of tree plantation on 200 hectares at Aruna Chapori. When the 5-year-long project ended, he chose to stay back even when other workers left.

Throughout his stay, he planted more and more saplings. Today, almost 30 years later, what Jadav started is now a massive 1.360-acre lush green forest which is home to Bengal tigers, Indian rhinoceroses, over 100 deer, rabbits, apes and several species of birds, including a large number of vultures which is almost extinct.

Jadav lives in his homegrown forest with his wife, three kids and three cows. While he sells milk for a living, his heart is still set on widening the forest area.

Man plants a tree in the same place every day — 37 years later, the world is amazed by the result pic.twitter.com/hFOdLw827r

— Cognitive Theorist (@PsychologyDoc) August 17, 2017