Indian Man, Jadav “Molai” Payeng, Single-Handedly Plants A 1,360 Acre Forest In Assam

More than 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav “Molai” Payeng began planting seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in India’s Assam region, the Asian Age reports.

It was 1979 and floods had washed a great number of snakes onto the sandbar. When Payeng — then only 16 — found them, they had all died.

“The snakes died in the heat, without any tree cover. I sat down and wept over their lifeless forms,” Payeng told the Times Of India.

“It was carnage. I alerted the forest department and asked them if they could grow trees there. They said nothing would grow there. Instead, they asked me to try growing bamboo. It was painful, but I did it. There was nobody to help me,” he told the newspaper.

Now that once-barren sandbar is a sprawling 1,360 acre forest, home to several thousands of varieties of trees and an astounding diversity of wildlife — including birds, deer, apes, rhino, elephants and even tigers.

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http://newtribeearth.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/indian-man-jadav-molai-payeng-single-handedly-plants-a-1360-acre-forest-in-assam/