Jadav Molai Payeng - The Forest Man of India

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Jadav Molai Payeng - The Forest Man of India

Almost three decades ago, a teenager, after noticing the deaths of a large number of reptiles due to a lack of a tree cover, started planting Bamboo in an area that had been washed away by floods. Today, that same land hosts 1,360 acres of Jungle called Molai Forest, named after Jadav “Molai” Payeng, the man who made this possible single handedly!

Payeng belongs to a tribe called “Mishing” in Assam, India. He lives in a small hut in the forest with his wife, and his 3 children. He has cattle and buffalo on his farm and sells the milk for his livelihood, which is his only source of income.

He was 16 when the flood hit Assam, and Payeng observed that the flow of migratory birds was gradually declining to the forest areas and wetlands near his home and snakes were disappearing in large numbers. This disturbed him. He alerted the forest department but they asked him to plant trees himself (which he actually did). He located a riverine island, on the banks of River Brahmaputra, and began to plant the saplings. Payeng visited the island and planted a few saplings every day for three decades. 

Since watering all these daily was taxing, he built a bamboo platform on the top of each sapling and placed earthen pots with small holes in them. The water would gradually drip on the plants below and water them through the week until the pots were drained of water.

This place is now a big forest and now is home to Bengal tigers, Indian rhinoceros, over 100 deer and rabbits besides apes and several varieties of birds, including a large number of vultures. There are several thousand trees. Bamboo covers an area of over 300 hectares. A herd of around 100 elephants regularly visits the forest every year and generally stays for around six months. They have given birth to 10 calves in the forest in recent years.

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INCREDIBLE BHARATHIYA