Jadav Molai Payeng The Hero
Chose your hero Wisely!!!
Greta Thunberg a 16 Years Old, Said “ How dare you?” In front of Cameras and the world press and immediately immortalized as a global celebrity.
Jadav Molai Payeng at the age of 16 started planting trees on a sandbar of the Brahmaputra River and created a 1360 acres forest reserve by all himself. He was born in Jorhat in the year 1963.
This born environmentalist spent 36 years of his life in this work without seeking the limelight, a prize or salary. Popularly known as the Forest Man, his forest located near Kokilamukh near Jorhat, is now called the Molai Forest. Encompassing an area of nearly 1360 acres his forest is now the habitat of 90-100 elephants (reported in 2008),3-5 Royal Bengal Tigers, one horned Rhino and other species. Forget the globe, even his own countryman don’t know him.
Jadav Payeng
In 1979, Payeng, then 16, encountered a large number of snakes that had died due to excessive heat after floods washed them onto the tree-less sandbar. That is when he planted around 20 bamboo seedlings on the sandbar.
He started working on the forest in 1979 when the social forestry division of Golaghat district launched a scheme of tree plantation on 200 hectares at Aruna Chapori situated at a distance of 5 km from Kokilamukh in Jorhat district.
Molai was one of the labourers who worked in that project which was completed after five years. He chose to stay back after the completion of the project even after other workers left. He not only looked after the plants, but continued to plant more trees on his own, in an effort to transform the area into a forest.
Molai forest, now houses Bengal tigers, Indian rhinoceros, and over 100 deer and rabbits. Molai forest is also home to monkeys and several varieties of birds, including a large number of vultures. There are several thousand trees, including valcol, arjun (), ejar (and the ), goldmohur, koroi, moj and himolu. Bamboo covers an area of over 300 hectares.
A herd of around 100 elephants regularly visits the forest every year and generally stay for around six months. They have given birth to 10 calves in the forest in recent years
His efforts became known to the authorities in 2008, when forest department officials went to the area in search of a herd of 115 elephants that had retreated into the forest after damaging property in the village of Aruna Chapori, which is about 1.5 km from the forest. The officials were surprised to see such a large and dense forest and since then the department has regularly visited the site.
In 2013, poachers tried to kill the rhinos staying in the forest but failed in their attempt due to Molai who alerted department officials. Officials promptly seized various articles used by the poachers to trap the animals.
Molai is ready to manage the forest in a better way and to go to other places of the state to start a similar venture. Now his aim is to spread his forest to another sand bar inside of Brahmaputra.
