If you spend any amount of time watching the news, you realize that the trees in the world are disappearing quickly. This includes the Amazon rain forest, which is being cut down to make way for farmland and fanning the flames of global warming. According to the UN, an area the size of South Africa has been lost permanently since 1990.
Another way to look at it is an area of the size of Panama being lost every year. Add on top of that the deforestation industry that is responsible for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions and it really adds to the plant species and animals that are going extinct. David Attenborough has said that species are going extinct at the same rate as the dinosaurs when they disappeared. And we all know that it didn’t end well for the dinosaurs.
Sometimes change isn’t about turning the tide completely, it’s about making small differences. That is what two Brazilians are trying to do. Married couple Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado are showing the world what is possible when individuals go up against the environmental issues we are now experiencing. For years, the husband spent his time documenting the Rwandan genocide and when he returned to Brazil, he found that it was not the same as when he left. At one time, the tropical rain forests were standing proudly but now, the country was practically barren. This includes the disappearance of wildlife.
“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. 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.
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