Jadav Payeng: The Man Who Raised The Forest

Majuli- once the largest river island in the world, is located in India on the Brahmaputra river. After the population of the island began to grow in the early 20th century, the island has lost a third of its territory. It is associated with deforestation, which has led to soil erosion, the annual flood of the river carries into the ocean thousands of tons of soil.

38 years ago, following a flood of the river, a young man named Jadav Payeng found on the shore dozens of dead reptiles. After the river carried them to the shore, they were unable to find a shadow to hide from sun, because there are no trees left. This day changed the rest of his life.

On the same day, Payeng approached to the forestry, with a request to begin to plant trees on the island so that a similar tragedy would not repeated. But he was refused, people believed that on this earth nothing would grow. Then Payeng decided to do it himself, he quit education and moved to live on a small sand bar near the island.

In 1979, Payeng planted the first 20 seeds bamboo. A couple of years when the sand bar turned into a small bamboo grove, he began to plant other trees. He noticed that the red ants change the soil's properties, restore it, so he began to bring them from the jungle in to his own little forest. Insects attracted birds and reptiles, the island slowly began to come to life…

After 38 years a small bamboo forest has grown to an area of 550 hectares (this is 1.5 times larger than Central Park in New-York City). Every year, a herd of 115 elephants come here for three months. Today it is home to the rhinos, deer and even tigers, they successfully reproduce. Recently in this area were seen vultures, which have not been seen for more than 40 years.

The government noticed Payeng's work only in 2009. The President personally handed him the fourth largest state award, and dubbed him “Forest Man of India”. Since then, Jadav Payeng has received a lot of awards, but they didn't bring him joy. The bigger the forest, the harder it is to look after it. More poachers trying to hunt the animals, people cut down trees.

The Indian government is trying to give the island the status of a UNESCO site, but this request was rejected several times. Unfortunately, the authorities are considering this island in the first place from an economic point of view. Payeng has a lot of good ideas on how to continue to increase the forest area and protect it, but no one is listening him.

For example, he offered to grow the coconut plantations, which control soil erosion, and will allow to profit from the harvest, the result will be visible in 5 years. But the local agricultural Department is in no hurry to take his idea.

Only in 2012, under public pressure, the local forestry service has agreed to undertake work planting trees on an area of 200 hectares. One of the members of the Indian Parliament promised to fight for the appropriation of the island status of the reserve, to exclude it from agricultural lands and to provide protection. At the moment nothing has changed, however Payeng continues to believe in a positive outcome.

For 38 years Payeng has not received any rupees for his work. He lives in his beloved forest with his wife and three children and earns a living by selling milk of cows and buffaloes. The tigers repeatedly killed cattle during a hunt. 15 years ago, when elephants first came to the island, they destroyed his home. Forest Man of India refers to every animal as to his own child and never angry at nature.

Jadav Payeng adheres to a simple and deep philosophy: we are all animals on this planet, and people are just animals in clothes. He believes that nature creates a harmonic and balances system, and we must protect this world. We, as elder brothers of all animals, are responsible for them.

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sources: Jadav Payeng WiKi, The man who saved the island, Liveinternet, Forest Man Youtube, images from Google search.

In 2012 a short film about Jadav Payeng earned about 9000$ on Kickstarter

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The story of Jadav Payeng is very similar to the story of Jia Haixia and Jia Wenqi (Jia Haixia and Jia Wenqi: Two Hands, Two Eyes, 14 years, 13.000 Trees. These people were guided by different motives, but did something incredible.