Thursday, September 6, 2018

They call him Forest Man

Jadav Payeng is a man from India who lives on Jajuli, the world's largest river island. As a boy, he noticed animals dying from drought amid dwindling greenery on the island. So when he was 16, he planted one tree. He's planted one tree every day since then, for almost 40 years. His trees have grown into a 1,360 acre forest larger than New York's Central Park, which is now inhabited by hundreds of elephants, tigers, rhinos, boars, deer, reptiles and birds.


"It was not as if I did it alone," he said. "You plant one or two trees and they have to seed. Once they seed, the wind knows how to plant them, the birds know how to sow them, the cows know, the elephants know, even the river knows. I see God in nature. Nature is God. It gives me inspiration. It gives me power. As long as it survives, I survive."

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