In the early 1990s, Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado was stationed in Rwanda to cover the genocide. The experience left him traumatized.
In 1994, when he returned to his home in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Sebastião was hoping to find solace in the lush green forest of his childhood. Instead, he discovered that his home had turned into a dusty, barren land for miles and miles, devoid of any wildlife.
"The land was as sick as I was. Only about 0.5% of the land was covered in trees," he said.
It was at this time that his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, proposed that they replant the entire forest. Sebastião supported the idea, and the two of them spent the next 20 years planting 2.7 million trees.
This resulted in the recovery of 1,500 acres of rainforest, and the site eventually became home to 293 plant species, 172 bird species, and 33 animal species, some of which were on the verge of extinction.
This is unreal. A new study was just released today in Nature Climate Change, finding that it's now inevitable that 110,000,000,000,000 tons of ice will melt in Greenland.
This would cause a whole foot of sea-level rise. (1/8)