Jadav Payeng
The “Forest Man” – India
Jadav Payeng is an environmental activist and forestry worker popularly known as the Forest Man of India. Payeng singlehandedly planted an entire forest on Majuli Island, India’s largest island. To date, he has spent over 30 years planting over 40 million trees, thereby creating an entirely man-made forest by ecologically reversing a barren desert sandbar of the Brahmaputra, and covering an area of 550 hectares of land! Once considered “crazy” by local inhabitants, Payeng is celebrated today as a conservationist. Sitting in a meadow beside his forest, he credits a botanical scientist for nurturing his fascination for the natural world.
Payeng had reclaimed an island in the mighty Brahmaputra river where increased flooding has changed the flow and built up sandbars along the long stretch of the river that runs through the middle of Assam. He was born in the indigenous Mising tribe of Assam. When Payeng was a boy, the son of poor a buffalo trader, this strip of land in the middle of the river was attached to the mainland. Erosion from powerful river waters of the Brahmaputra severed it. Jadav sought no permission to plant a forest. He just grew it, carrying on what he says is his Mishing tribe’s tradition of honoring nature.
The riverbanks are home to some 250 families from the Mishing tribe. Payeng explains that they have inhabited the area for eons, and there are no deeds or titles to land. He hauls his boat ashore, unloads his bicycle and begins the daily 2-mile trek to his vegetable farm and his life’s mission: reviving the ecosystem here.
The forest, which came to be known as Molai forest, now houses Bengal tigers, Indian rhinoceros, and over 100 deer and rabbits. Molai forest is also home to monkeys and several varieties of birds, including a large number of vultures. There are several thousand trees with bamboo covering 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. In an interview from 2012, he revealed that he has lost around 100 of his cows and buffaloes to the tigers in the forest, but blames the people who carry out large scale encroachment and destruction of forests as the root cause of the plight of wild animals.In 2015, he was honored with Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India.
This Mishing tribesman separates out poisonous plants from medicinal herbs. He drinks a concoction of herbs every day for his health. He smiles and says a hundred different herbs grown on his island make up the recipe for the local beer. He feels he’s “set an example of what one man can do” for the environment.
“I never feel danger in the forest. It’s my biggest home.”
“I see God in nature. Nature is God. It gives me inspiration. It gives me power … As long as it survives, I survive.”
“Tree is at the root of human life. If you have trees, you can save the planet and then you can save animals. The future has to be green,”
Video 1: Forest Man Documentary
Video 2: Man who Planted a Forest
