Jadav “Molai” Payeng (born 1963) is an environmental activist and forestry worker from Jorhat, popularly known as the Forest Man of India. Over the course of several decades, he has planted and tended trees on a sandbar of the river Brahmaputra turning it into a forest reserve.
Jadav Molai Payeng is a person born in a nomadic tribe of Assam. He single handedly transformed a barren land into Forest. … From him, we learn that even if a large crowd causes harm to environment, a single man can establish a new forest, only if determined. Known as the Forest Man of India, spent 30 years of his life planting trees to save his island, creating a forest and restoring wildlife in it.
“I saw snakes dying in extreme heat; in absence of tree cover. I sat and wept alone over the motionless bodies of snakes and thought it was nothing short of a massacre. I went to the forest department and alerted them about the situation and even asked them if I could plant some trees there. Their reply was that nothing could grow here and advised me to try planting bamboo instead. It hurt a lot but I rather stick to it. I always thought that nature has prepared a food chain then why can’t we stay attach to it to protect these animals?” These are the words of Jadav Molai Payeng- a passionate man who created a vast 1360 acre jungle all by himself.
Jadav “Molai” Payeng was a teenager, more than 30 years ago, when he started sowing seeds along an infertile sandbar close to his birthplace in Assam region in northern India to develop a safe haven for flora and fauna. With the passage of time, he chose to devote his whole life to this noble cause. For this, he shifted to a place where he could work around the clock to make an abundant and new forest ecology. Today, the same location hosts an expansive space made entirely by him- more than 1350 acres of jungle.
