Jadav Payeng, an uneducated layman from Assam, a northeastern state of India, is a hero for his lonely effort to turn a flood-washed 550 hectors of sandbar into a thick forest. The sandbar that locates in the center of the Brahmaputra River in Assam has been converted to a dense forest with a huge variety of trees in over 30 years. The forest today houses many wild animals, vultures, reptiles and other creatures.
Payeng has been spending whole his lifetime since 1979 for the forest, which is called Molai Kathoni (Molai’s forest) by the locales. Molai is the pet name of Payeng, who started his efforts in frustration of a huge flood in 1979, which washed away the trees and habitats of many creatures in the locality. Since then, he has been working in the area, which was laying forlorn, plating bamboo first and other trees later on.
As part of making the land fertile for other trees, Payeng depended on many rustic methods like growing red ants and other small creatures. In several years, vultures, migratory birds and others started to visit the area and to stay there. As of now, this single man forest has at least five tigers, a number of elephants and many other wild creatures.
Talking to the Times of India, Payeng behaved quite like a qualified conservationist. He was telling that the nature had a flourishing food chain and so it should be protected by humans. He was asking who would safeguard the nature and its creatures if humans, the superior being on the earth, hunted them.
Via: TheTimesofIndia
