Are You Planting Trees?

Indian man single-handedly plants forest

By Nadine Bells | Good News, 4 Apr, 2012

Jadav Payeng, known as “Mulai” to his friends and neighbours, has spent the last 30 years single-handedly planting and caring for a huge 550-hectare forest on a sandbar in the middle of the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India.
In 1980, Assam’s Jorhat district’s social forestry division launched a tree-planting initiative on 200 hectares of the land. After five years, the project was completed and the labourers left—except for Payeng. He stayed behind, living alone on the sandbar.
Payeng chose a life of isolation on the sandbar where he cared for the trees and continued to plant thousands more of them.
First, he transformed the sandbar into a bamboo thicket.
“I then decided to grow proper trees. I collected and planted them. I also transported red ants from my village, and was stung many times. Red ants change the soil’s properties. That was an experience,” Payeng tells the Times of India.
He still lives in the forest’s vicinity, in a hut with his wife and three children. He earns money by selling cow and buffalo milk.
The forest, home to thousands of varieties of trees, is now known as “Mulai Kathoni,” or “Mulai’s forest.” Payeng’s dedication to the land didn’t just cultivate thriving plants, it provided a home for wildlife, including endangered animals.
“There are about four tigers, three rhinos and more than a hundred deer, rabbits and apes. There are innumerable varieties of birds who call this place home, as well. A herd of about 100 elephants is known to visit the place every year for six months,” Oddity Central reports.
Forestry officials were only made aware of the huge forest in 2008.
“We were surprised to find such a dense forest on the sandbar,” Assistant Conservator of Forests, Gunin Saikia tells the Times of India. “We’re amazed at Payeng. He has been at it for 30 years. Had he been in any other country, he would have been made a hero.”
There is now talk of Mulai’s forest being declared a wildlife sanctuary. If the government proves itself capable of caring for the land, Payeng will start planting elsewhere.