Over 20 years Brazilian Couple Planted Two Million Trees To Restore A Forest
When photographer Sebastião Salgado returned from an assignment in East Africa to take over family land in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil in 1994, he was devastated to find that the tropical forest he remembered as a child was gone, with only 0.5% of the land covered in trees. Then his wife, Lélia, had an idea to replant the forest.
The couple set up Instituto Terra, an environmental organization for this purpose in 1998 and proceeded to work with employees and volunteers to restore the 1,750-acre forest. As of January 2019, they had planted more than 2.5 million seedlings from 297 native species.
The property is now a federally recognized nature preserve and a nonprofit organization that raises millions of tree seedlings in its nursery, trains young ecologists and welcomes visitors, according to the Smithsonian .
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