20-Year Reforestation Project Plants 2.7 Million Trees — by Fino MenezesTHE DREAM OF PLANTING A FOREST IN BRAZIL GAVE BIRTH TO THE INSTITUTO TERRA
When celebrated Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado took over family land in the state of Minas Gerais, instead of the tropical paradise that he remembered as a child, he found the trees cut down and the wildlife gone.
He was devastated. It was 1994 and he had just returned from a traumatic assignment reporting on the genocide in Rwanda.
“The land was as sick as I was – everything was destroyed,” Salgado told The Guardian. “Only about 0.5% of the land was covered in trees.”
Salgado’s wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, had the idea to replant the forest. When they began to do that, all the insects and birds and fish began to return.
Salgado and his family recruited partners, raised funds and, in April 1998, they founded the Instituto Terra and have now planted more than 2 million trees, totally transforming the environment.
In doing so, Salgado says he has found one answer to climate change – as well as creative inspiration.
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