

The Man Who Single-Handedly Converted a Washed-Out Land Into a 1,360 Acre Forest - dhimant
http://www.thebetterindia.com/10904/jadav-molai-payeng-forest-man-india/

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spodek
How did "tree-hugger" become an insult?

> “The education system should be like this, every kid should be asked to
> plant two trees,” Payeng says.

Damn straight! That idea works in so many ways I can't believe we don't
inscribe it on every school building.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I would change that to a garden. Kids should understand where their food comes
from,how to grow healthy food (including animals), and how to prepare it.
Either way, it's about the importance of being in touch with the growing
planet. I fully believe the farm-to-table movement could do incredible things
for the environmental movement.

"Tree hugger", as a pejorative, typically implies a person who appears to have
lost a sense of balance in the environmental discussion. People aren't going
to move back intro thatched roofed, dirt floored huts, and, when used as a
pejorative, that is the inference being made. It's a case of using extremists
to invalidate large groups of people. Typical human.

~~~
warfangle
Planting trees and planting a garden call to disparate lessons!

Planting trees is about ecosystem conservation.

Planting and tending a garden is about understanding plant life cycle, the
nitrogen cycle, /and/ where food comes from.

Unless the gardens you're thinking of planting self-sustain their nutrients,
conserve (or even generate a surplus of) water, and have zero impact on
surrounding ecosystems (fertilizer and pesticide runoff), they don't really
teach anything about ecosystems other than how we can manipulate them for our
gain (greedy or otherwise).

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The problem with using a tree to try to teach these lessons is trees grow too
slowly. I agree they don't teach exactly the same thing, but the end goal is
to make kids aware that we need to be aware that our lives are intertwined
with the health of the earth. Seeing the growth cycle at a level that kids can
comprehend will do more for that than planting something that, once planted,
effectively becomes little more than a piece of scenery to them.

The importance of water conservation, how we interact and effect the water
cycle, air quality, and many other things can be taught more effectively using
the much-faster growing vegetable garden, and, since the kids have a vested
interest (they get to _eat_ what they grow), they are more engaged in these
lessons.

I'm not saying kids planting trees is a bad idea, I just don't think it would
be a very useful _teaching_ tool for internalizing the importance of
conservation.

~~~
warfangle
Some kinds of trees can certainly grow fast enough, especially if it's a
multi-year curriculum that gets revisited regularly.

Empress trees grow 10-15 feet in a year.

A weeping willow will grow about 5.5 feet in a year.

------
sdfjkl
Having planted some trees myself as a teenager (under the supervision of my
grandfather, a forest warden), I can tell you it is very rewarding to do
so[1]. It is also a lot of work. The young pines we planted (bought from a
tree nursery) needed protection from deer, who like to munch on them while
they're small, from boars who destroy the bark by rubbing their itching hide
against it, and from bark beetles who decimate entire forests if left
unchecked. From humans they were protected legally.

[1] Here's a series of shots of an apple tree growing up:
[https://plus.google.com/photos/114301087219148980063/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/114301087219148980063/albums/5914915717001137681)

~~~
bane
Interestingly, I took part in an environmental project when I was in High
School to thin out a deeply overgrown area of conifers that had been planted
20 years prior as part of a tree planting initiative to reclaim some
undeveloped farm land that belonged to the county and was next to a school.

We had to cut down about 10% of the trees and haul out half of the felled
trees, chosen at random, and introduce a half dozen clearings about a 1/4 acre
each. The intention was to thin it out so that wildlife could move around more
easily in it and become a small wildlife sanctuary. Apparently it worked as
the site is now a dedicated bird sanctuary.

But I do wish we could have transplanted the trees rather than just cut them
down.

~~~
ensignavenger
Transplanting a tree that has been growing for 20 years would generally
require a substantial amount of digging!

~~~
wglb
And a non-zero risk of loss after replanting.

------
xefer
This immediately brought to mind:

"The Man Who Planted Trees" the book which was adapted into an animated film
that won the Acadamy Award for Best Animated Short Film and Short Film Palme
d'Or in 1987

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_7yEPNUXsU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_7yEPNUXsU)

~~~
apu
It's a really phenomenal film. It was shown a couple of years ago at
SIGGRAPH's annual animation festival with John Lasseter (of Pixar) introducing
it and saying it was one of his favorite films and a real inspiration to him.

Frederic Back (the creator of the film), was present as well, though not in
great health. When he was brought on stage (I think after the screening),
Lasseter had tears in his eyes.

Sadly, Back died at the end of last year.

 _We spent the whole day in silence, walking through his forest. It was in
three sections, and measured 11 kilometres long and 3 kilometres at its
widest. When I reminded myself that all this was the work of the hand and soul
of one man, with no mechanical help, it seemed to me that men could be as
effective as God in tasks other than destruction._

------
dukerutledge
Single handedly is a bit of hyperbole. To quote the man, "my family supports
me unconditionally, they help me if more trees need to be planted."

We need to stop relying on this super man concept. Community creates change
through support and encouragement, no man is an island.

------
zacinbusiness
This is amazing. "...I knew I had to make the planet greener." Yes! I love how
he saw a problem and just set out to solve it because he knew no one else
would. He's a real hacker.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
Most entrepreneurs claiming to "change the world" and "make a dent in the
universe" with their silly little mobile apps have nothing on this guy.

~~~
wlesieutre
To quote HBO's Silicon Valley: “Hooli is making the world a better place
through minimal messaging transport layers.”

This is a great inspiration to actually get out and do something.

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denzil_correa
There's a Wikipedia page for the forest [0] and the man (Jadav Payeng) too
[1].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molai_forest](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molai_forest)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadav_Payeng](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadav_Payeng)

------
jotm
Now here's a glimpse of what's possible when it's an organized effort:
[http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Macedonia_plants_three_mil...](http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Macedonia_plants_three_million_trees_to_revive_forests_999.html)

3 million trees in 1 day.

------
mbubb
As a human attempt this is breathtaking. Bringing back tigers, etc.
Phenomenal.

Something troubles me - not specifically about this attempt but such attempts
in general.

I live a few miles away from the "Meadowlands" in New Jersey - a good example
of land thought to be useless and in the need of 'improvement' and yet it is
rich enough to support wildlife within eyesight of NYC. People have drained it
and dumped unmentionable crap in it. Cars and refineries pollute it. And yet
it survives and provides much of the areas o2 and has other useful functions
like providing a resting place for the dead bodies from the real life
'Sopranos'. I've seen deer and woodchucks by our datacenter and coyotes have
been reported poaching dogs in the area.

"Unimproved land" I think they call it - marshes, wetlands, swamps and bogs.
Sometimes we rush in to improve 'wastelands' that are not wssted land.
Wetlands and tidal flats are the basis for life and there are more biomes than
the visible 'pretty' ones with lions and tigers and bears...

A forest burns down and it remains an ugly, smelly blight - but it becomes a
different ecosystem for a geological instant ( a few human generations...) But
there is a human impulse to 'fix' it. Like we fixed Australia by introducing
rabbits or the US by adding starlings and English sparrows. Our improvements
often become problems in their own right.

It is hard to argue with building forests, though. There is no place I
personally enjoy more. The forsets of the Catskills or the Adirondacks. Or the
ones I grew up near in suburban NJ. WHen I lived in Korea - looking out at
Buhkansan (largest mountian in the Seoul area) in the winter - I remarked how
the mountain looked like a closely cropped head or hair. My friend informed me
that was a legacy of the Korean War napalm (or whatever it was called at the
time) was used to clear the mountains of hiding places. The trees were so even
because they had been planted in the postwar years, so the forests I enjoyed
hiking in were the result of a huge communal amount of human activity.

Again - mad props to this guy and the community around them. I suspect that he
rescued land that was ravaged already by human activity as well as the
mentioned flood. I live a few miles away from the "Meadowlands" in New Jersey
- a good example of land thought to be useless and in the need of
'improvement'

"Unimproved land" I think they call it - marshes, wetlands, swamps and bogs.
Sometimes we rush in to improve 'wastelands' that are not wssted land.
Wetlands and tidal flats are the basis for life and there are more biomes than
the visible 'pretty' ones with lions and tigers and bears...

A forest burns down and it remains an ugly, smelly blight - but it becomes a
different ecosystem for a geological instant ( a few human generations...)

Again - mad props to this guy and the community around them. I suspect that he
rescued land that was ravaged already by human activity as well as the
mentioned flood.

------
ohwp
Wow, his friends created houses for themselves. He created a forest for
everyone...

------
reforge_reborn
As an aside. I just noticed that site features mostly inspiring and positive
stories. The world definitely needs more news like those.

One good thing about the internet is that we can pick the kind of news that we
like.

I refuse to listen to news mediums where fear and negativity are the main
focus. The world is a wonderful place if we look at the right places.
(Cofirmation bias anyone :)

------
tren
Willie Smits gave an interesting talk about a more systematic way of restoring
a rainforest on TED:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest](http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest)

~~~
VikingCoder
I want to believe in this so much, but I have huge doubts. Can someone cite
some solid evidence that this works? Is Willie Smits continuing to do this in
other places? Work like this sounds to me like it's just about the most
important thing in the world, and it scares me to know just one TED talk, and
a couple other references about it.

I wish this was the kind of thing that Al Gore, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson
drew a lot more attention to.

~~~
ApeOverlord
This guy's work is complete bullshit-- and has been debunked by reputable
scientists. There is no independent scientific evidence for it. If it were
legit, you'd know about it...
[https://www.ted.com/pages/791](https://www.ted.com/pages/791)
[http://awionline.org/content/calamity-wild-orangutans-
borneo](http://awionline.org/content/calamity-wild-orangutans-borneo)

------
nowarninglabel
I truly admire this man. I'm wanting to do a smaller scale similar effort on
150-ish acres of land I own. It previously was ravaged by forest fire (long
before I bought it) and there are very few trees left. I've been trying to
water the new saplings that are growing, but I haven't set up the
infrastructure to be able to scale that yet. I really wish there was more help
from local government on restoring forests. We have in the U.S. a program for
setting aside land as a preserve and getting a tax break. I've tried to do
that to help fund re-foresting the land, but no one seems to be able to point
me to how to actually move forward with that process (you need a local
conversation org to sponsor you, but the ones I talked were too big to have
time for me). I feel like if we just provided more information and process
then folks like me could re-forest a lot of land.

~~~
jmpe
Find out what the native pioneer species are and start with those. They're
typically fast growing things like bramble, birch, ... Once they get off
they'll prevent soil erosion, top soil dehydration and dampen wind whilst
adding organic matter to the top soil. After 5 - 10 years you can start
introducing slower growing native trees.

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SergeyDruid
For those who don't know, they made a successfully funded Kickstarter campaign
on the story: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/59012691/forest-man-
pos...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/59012691/forest-man-post-
production)

~~~
hownottowrite
The film just won an award at Cannes. [http://www.ampav.com/index.php/student-
programs/cannes-emerg...](http://www.ampav.com/index.php/student-
programs/cannes-emerging-filmmaker-showcase/2014-finalists-emerging-filmmaker-
showcase-presented-by-american-express/)

------
davidw
Makes me think of this story about Darwin:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-11137903](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11137903)

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fiatjaf
This not an area so big, but it is good for those who think that only the
government can preserve the environment (while, well, the government mostly
destroys it).

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smackay
John Wamsley is another colourful character with a very hands-on approach to
conservation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wamsley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wamsley)

[http://www.abc.net.au/site-
archive/rural/legends/stories/7_1...](http://www.abc.net.au/site-
archive/rural/legends/stories/7_1.htm)

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dhruvpathak
Truly inspiring. An unsung hero.

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phoebe311
emmm, his friends have built a house. He created a timber for all ..

