[P2P-F] Fw: [Arthakranti] Environment Hero [1 Attachment]

Fri Aug 17 11:24:53 CEST 2012

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Sudhir Rao <sudhir.sr.rao at gmail.com>
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2012, 5:13
Subject: [Arthakranti] Environment Hero [1 Attachment]

[Attachment(s) from Sudhir Rao included below]

Story of Jadav Payeng
look at this man (see attachment) carefully. he is no ordinary man. he lives by
the river in a small hut in kokilamukh, assam. this man will be addressing a UN
convention in paris in less than two months from now. the convention will be
chaired by some of the top notch environmentalists from across the world. a few
years back president kalam sought an hour and a half to talk to him after
giving him a president's medal. he is known as the forest man of india. he is
jadav payeng aka mulai
Way back in 1953, French author
Jean Giono wrote the epic tale The Man Who Planted Trees. It seemed so real
that readers thought the central character, Elzeard Bouffier , was a living
individual until the author clarified he had created the person only to make
his readers fall in love with trees. Assam's Jadav Payeng has never heard of
Giono's book. But he could be Bouffier. He has single-handedly grown a
sprawling forest on a 550-hectare sandbar in the middle of the Brahmaputra. It
now has many endangered animals, including at least five tigers, one of which
bore two cubs recently.
The place lies in Jorhat, some 350 km from
Guwahati by road, and it wasn't easy for Sunday Times to access him. At one
point on the stretch, a smaller road has to be taken for some 30 km to reach
the riverbank. There, if one is lucky, boatmen will ferry you across to the
north bank. A trek of another 7 km will then land you near Payeng's door.
Locals call the place 'Molai Kathoni' (Molai's woods) after Payeng's pet name,
Molai.
It all started way back in 1979 when floods
washed a large number of snakes ashore on the sandbar. One day, after the
waters had receded, Payeng , only 16 then, found the place dotted with the dead
reptiles. That was the turning point of his life.
"The snakes died in the heat, without any
tree cover. I sat down and wept over their lifeless forms. It was carnage . I
alerted the forest department and asked them if they could grow trees there.
They said nothing would grow there. Instead, they asked me to try growing
bamboo. It was painful, but I did it. There was nobody to help me. Nobody was
interested," says Payeng, now 47.
Leaving his education and home, he started
living on the sandbar. Unlike Robinson Crusoe, Payeng willingly accepted a life
of isolation. And no, he had no Man Friday. He watered the plants morning and
evening and pruned them. After a few years, the sandbar was transformed into a
bamboo thicket. "I then decided to grow proper trees. I collected and
planted them. I also transported red ants from my village, and was stung many
times. Red ants change the soil's properties . That was an experience,"
Payeng says, laughing.
Soon, there were a variety of flora and fauna
which burst in the sandbar, including endangered animals like the one-horned
rhino and Royal Bengal tiger. "After 12 years, we've seen vultures.
Migratory birds, too, have started flocking here. Deer and cattle have
attracted predators," claims Payeng . He says locals recently killed a
rhino which was seen in his forest at another forest in Sibsagar district.
Payeng talks like a trained conservationist.
"Nature has made a food chain; why can't we stick to it? Who would protect
these animals if we, as superior beings, start hunting them?"
The Assam state forest
department learnt about Payeng's forest only in 2008 when a herd of some 100
wild elephants strayed into it after a marauding spree in villages nearby. They
also destroyed Payeng's hutment . It was then that assistant conservator of
forests Gunin Saikia met Payeng for the first time.
"We were surprised to find such a dense
forest on the sandbar. Locals, whose homes had been destroyed by the
pachyderms, wanted to cut down the forest, but Payeng dared them to kill him
instead. He treats the trees and animals like his own children. Seeing this,
we, too, decided to pitch in," says Saikia. "We're amazed at Payeng.
He has been at it for 30 years. Had he been in any other country, he would have
been made a hero."

l

__._,_.___Attachment(s) from Sudhir Rao 
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Jadav Payeng.jpg
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