Land owners Sebãstiao Salgado and Lélia Wanick inherited Bulcão Farm, a barren 1,750-acre cattle farm and restored it to a lush rainforest. The couple replanted 4 million trees in Brazil, combating widespread deforestation and bringing hope to tropical forests.
However, global deforestation trends are still worrying. Using satellite images, researchers at
the Global Forest Watch (GFW) found that over 30 million acres were lost in 2018 alone, a part of a larger declining trend in rainforests that satellites have been tracking since 2001.
Frances Seymour, a fellow at GFW, told the New York Times, “If you look back over the last 18 years, it’s clear that the overall trend is still upward... We’re nowhere near winning this battle.”
Rainforests are also battling unfavorable weather conditions brought on by climate change. Dry weather increases the probability of forest fires, which declines the number of trees sequestering carbon.
Although the majority of this loss is due to forest fires, much of deforestation is human driven. Like many farmers in Brazil, Salgado’s parents cut down all the trees for timber, and planted African grass to raise cattle on. The Rio Doce Valley, where Salgado’s land is located, shrunk to 4% of its original size. Overall, the Atlantic Forest is now less than 10%.
In 1990, after Salgado returned from a photo assignment covering the Rwanda Genocide, he and his wife returned to Brazil to take the land over from his parents. They were shocked when they saw the barren land, calling it a “bare crust”.
Wanick suggested that they replant the land, “It was so natural, instinctive. The land was so degraded, so horrible. What a bad gift! Why not plant?” Covering the Rwanda Genocide took an emotional toll on Salgado. Losing his faith in humanity, Salgado stopped taking photos and turned his energy to reviving his childhood farm.
The pair partnered with Vale, a controversial mining group, but as Salgado explained to the
Smithsonian, “we are not radicals… We’re not in an ivory tower. We need everybody: companies, governments, mayors. Everybody.”
Under Vale’s forest engineer, Renato de Jesus, they hired workers to tackle invasive grasses, and planted legumes to saturate their property, now called the Instituto Terra, with nitrogen and fast growing species to encourage birds and insects to come back.
However, their herculean task was not without its stumbles. In their first round of planting, the team lost ⅗ of their crops. Salgado explains that reviving the forest is like raising a baby, “You need to teach it to walk, to speak, and then they can go to school on their own. Trees are the same. You need to hold them close for a while.” “We made the holes too tight,” Salgado told the Smithsonian. “For weeks I was sick – sick to see this disaster.” Today, they lose less than 10% of their saplings.
Although Instituto Terra received funding from several groups, the founding couple used money out of pocket in order to achieve their goals. In 2003, Salgado sold his camera for over 100K in an auction. Salgado said, “One small camera, and we planted 30,000 trees.”
While the couple may have been ecologically driven to replant their land, their reward was twofold. Reviving the forest inspired Salgado to return to photography and gave new purpose to the couple. Instituto Terra is now a non-profit which focuses on education, and forest management. Today, the institute is home to 33 species of mammals, 173 birds, 16 reptiles, and 15 amphibians, many of which are endangered
Efforts like Instituto Terra are combatting symptoms of larger trends in global warming. While restoration is necessary, there are also important moves to made in policy and management of forests.
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