Watch this true story of a boy who grew a whole forest!
Video Transcript
Narrator: The Boy Who Grew a Forest. The True Story of Jadav Payeng.
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now. -proverb
In India, on a large river island, among farms and families hard at work, there lived a boy who loved trees.
Trees meant shade, food, and shelter for many.
But each rainy season, floodwaters swallowed more and more of the beautiful tree-covered land.
The boy's precious island was shrinking—eroding away with the rushing river, leaving empty sandbars behind.
The boy witnessed animals stranded on those sandbars, their homes destroyed.
He feared that if animals withered without trees, people would too.
The boy shared his fears with the village.
The elders explained that the only way to help animals was to create new homes for them.
They gifted the boy with twenty bamboo saplings.
Alone, he canoed down the muddy river.
He wished he could cover all the land with trees... but a large sandbar nearby was a place to start.
The land was too barren for animals, the shores too sandy for leafy trees. Would bamboo grow? The boy hoped.
Determined, he began to plant. One shaft... two... then three.
Every day, he watered the saplings by hand, sweat trickling down his face and chest.
He built a watering system to help... and lugged heavy buckets from the river. His arms grew tired, his back sore.
Still, each day, he tended to the plants. And, over time, the bamboo patch grew... into a healthy thicket.
The boy was proud of his work, but he worried it wouldn't be enough to stop the swelling river or to provide shelter for animals.
If he wanted more plants to grow, he would have to create a richer soil.
The boy carried cow dung, earthworms, termites, and angry red ants that bit him on the journey to their new home.
He brought seeds from neighboring villages, over trails, through brush, down the river. Each day, he planted.
As years passed and the boy grew, so did a forest.
Ten acres... twenty acres... then forty.
Wildlife returned for the first time in many years: buffalo, one-horned rhinos, and snakes, gibbons, migratory birds, and elephants.
The man's forest teemed with life and diversity.
Not everyone was happy.
Fear swept over the villages when tigers arrived.
So the man planted more grasses to attract small animals that would keep the tigers happy in the forest.
Elephants wandered into neighboring farms to feast on the crops.
So the man planted more fruiting trees to help feed the hungry elephants.
Some wanted to harvest the forest to build homes, but the man was there to plant anew.
Others tried to hunt the animals for their horns and fur, but the man was there to protect.
Few thought the forest would last, but the man believed in its strength.
Now, in India, on a large river island, among wildlife and trees as tall as buildings, there lives a man who has planted a forest.
The forest is called Molai, after a man named Jadav "Molai" Payeng, who never stopped planting and pruning and protecting.
"Only by growing plants the Earth will survive." -Jadav Payeng
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