According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, 129 million hectares of forest, which is almost equal in size to South Africa, have been disappeared from the Earth completely since 1990.
Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado got so upset when the rain forest around their home was destroyed.
15 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation, and countless species of plants and animals lost their habitats every day. It is very sad that there an only a handful of trees are replanted after being cut.
However, there are still some people who think for the world and doing their best to recreate what the logging industry destroying.
A Brazilian couple, photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado doing great work and their story will inspire you to join the good cause.
Sebastião is one of the most famous and talented Brazilian photojournalists, and his photos have printed in numerous press publications. He traveled all over the world to capture the best pictures, the photographer finally returned back home to Brazil in the 90’s.
He had just quit photographing the gruesome Rwandan genocide and wanted to take a much-needed break for physical and emotional rest.
Sadly, what he saw after returning home made him really sad, when there used to be dense forest now there was dry. But Sebastião decided to do something about it, he talks to his wife and they thought to replant the forest. And the amazing journey just started.
“The land was as sick as I was, everything was destroyed,” said Sebastião in an interview with The Guardian. “Only about 0.5% of the land was covered in trees. Then my wife had a fabulous idea to replant this forest. And when we began to do that, then all the insects and birds and fish returned and, thanks to this increase of the trees I, too, was reborn, this was the most important moment.”
The couple along with a small organization, called Instituto Terra to bring the forest back to life, and together they planted 4 million tree saplings.
Sebastião believed they had a solution. “There is a single being which can transform CO2 to oxygen, which is the tree. We need to replant the forest,” said the photographer. “You need forest with native trees, and you need to gather the seeds in the same region you plant them or the serpents and the termites won’t come.
And if you plant forests that don’t belong, the animals don’t come here and the forest is silent.”
They work hard for 20 years in planting trees, to bring back to life, even the wildlife returned to it!
In total, 172 bird species, 33 species of mammals, 293 species of plants and 15 species of reptiles have returned there.
The couple’s hard work makes us believe in achieving whatever we want. They are the best example of society.
“We need to listen to the words of the people on the land,” said the photographer. “Nature is the earth and it is other beings and if we don’t have some kind of spiritual return to our planet, I fear that we will be compromised.”
People appreciated their effort and praised them.
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