Floods
come with untold suffering and immense miseries to the people. Their belongings
are washed away. Houses collapse and people are rendered homeless. Many men,
women, children and cattle are swept away by the current of the river. Floods
destroy crops standing in the fields and cause famine. They also cause
epidemics. Many people lose their resources and tools and thus lose their
occupation. It is a very pitiable sight to see cattle being washed away by the
current of the river during the floods.
But the
most scary & nasty scene appears, when
waters all around receded,
reptiles which came with water at the time of floods, now starts dying in
absence of their shelter.
A
little more than 30 years ago, way back in 1979 in Assam, floods washed a large
number of reptiles ashore on the sandbar. One day, after the waters had
receded, a 16 year old teenager named Jadav
"Molai" Payeng found the place dotted with the dead reptiles all
over. The snakes died because of the heat, without any tree cover. He sat down and wept over their lifeless
forms. It was carnage.
He
alerted the forest department and to avoid such occurrence from next year
onwards, asked them if they could grow trees. They said nothing would grow
there. There was nobody to help him. Nobody was interested. It was painful but
seeing the situation he has taken the responsibility to grow trees in this
area. he decided to dedicate his
life to this endeavour, so he moved to the site so he could work full-time
creating a lush new forest
ecosystem.
He started
growing bamboo in that place. He planted around 20 bamboo seedlings on the
sandbar. He continued to plant more trees on his own. With his effort and dedication he transforms
that place into the forest. Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360
acres of jungle that Payeng planted- single-handedly.
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. A herd
of around 100 elephants regularly visits the forest every year and generally
stay for around six months. They have given birth to 10 calves in the forest in
recent years.Now there are several thousand trees, including valcol, arjun (Terminalia
arjuna), ejar (Lagerstroemia speciosa), goldmohur (Delonix regia),
koroi (Albizia procera), moj (Archidendron bigeminum) and himolu (Bombax ceiba)and
Bambo all over the place.
For
almost 30 years, off everyone’s radar, without support or subsidies, without
fear or favour, without Forest Department or foreign hand, Payeng, almost
obsessively, continued to expand the forest and the fruit of his labour is now
being celebrated around the world. It is indeed amazing that his extraordinary
mission was largely unknown until 2008,
when forest department officials went to the area in search of a herd of 115
elephants that had retreated into the forest after damaging property in the
village of Aruna Chapori, which is about 1.5 km from the forest. The
officials were surprised to see such a large and dense forest and since then
the department has regularly visited the site.
Jadav
Payeng was honoured at a public function arranged by the School of Environmental
Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University on 22
April 2012 for
his remarkable achievement. He was honoured at Indian Institute of Forest
Management during
their annual event Coalescence. In 2015, he was honoured with Padma
Shri, the
fourth highest civilian award in India.
It is
the power of responsibility that a man transforms wasteland into the dense
forest.You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful
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