This couple spent 2 decades planting the entire forest and now animals have returned

About 3 decades ago, Brazilian photojournalist, Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado returned from East Africa. He was on location documenting the horrors of the Rwanda genocide. After his project completed, he took his family to a cattle ranch in Minas Gerais, a region he remembered as lush green and a lively rainforest.

To his disappointment, sadly, the area had undergone a drastic transformation. Only a small portfolio of the area was covered in trees and unfortunately, all the wildlife had disappeared.

“The land was as sick as I was,” he tells The Guardian,

He and his wife Leila came up with an idea. They decide to plant trees in the area in order to bring the forest back to life and hope that wildlife comes back.

In 1998, they set up the Instituto Terra, an environmental organization dedicated to the sustainable development of the Valley of the River Doce. Over the several next years, Sebastião and his team populated the 1,754-acre forest, transforming it from a barren field to a land of tropical paradise.

Today,  In addition to 293 species of trees, the forest has about different 172 species of birds, 33 species of mammals, and 15 species of amphibians and reptiles and many of them were endangered of extinction for good.

 

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– How an entire forest with 2,7 million trees has been restored in 20 years —- When the Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado returned home after his traumatic assignment of reporting on genocide in Rwanda, the Minas Gerais, his home, which was once a paradise of tropical forests, had turned into a barren land with no trees and no wildlife. He and his wife Lélia founded Instituto Terra as a beacon to awaken environmental awareness of the need to restore and conserve forest land. —- Native species of trees were chosen with the aim of creating a forest of high biomass and diversity. Have returned 293 species of plants, 33 of mammals, 15 of reptiles and 15 of amphibians. —- By December 2012, the Instituto Terra had developed about 700 educational projects and brought in about 65,000 people who work in more than 170 municipalities present in the Valley of the River Doce. It covered the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, as well as reaching out to states of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. —- #sebastiaosalgado #institutoterra #aimorésminasgerais #savetherainforest

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Um tamanduá de colete! 😁😁😁 Difícil mas escontrado @alice_cavaleiro @josyellypereiradasilva valeew.!

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