Couple Spends 26 Years Replanting A Rainforest

Pamela Gale Malhotra and her husband, Anil Malhotra, own Sai Sanctuary, the only private wildlife sanctuary in India and have been replanting and protecting forests and wildlife since it’s foundation in 1991. Today, SAI Sanctuary covers over 300 acres of wildlife that are home to more than 200 globally endangered species of plants and animals, including Asian elephants and Bengal tigers.

“When we first came here, most of the lands that were sold to us, were abandoned lands,” Pamela told Great Big Story. “Abandoned rice fields, coffee, and cardamom fields as well. A lot of deforestation had taken place. And that took a lot, a lot of care and energy and time and years to bring it back.”

The part of India where the sanctuary is located, Kodagu district, has experienced a dramatic decrease in forest cover – from 86% in the 1970s to 16% today. Pamela explained that this has disastrous effects on rainfall patterns and water supply not only in the district but throughout the south of India.

You could say that the couple is piecing back together with the environment by ensuring that the forests can provide shelter for the animals, and the animals can in return keep the forests healthy. “We both feel a tremendous amount of joy when we walk through the sanctuary,” said Pamela. “I’ve never felt this kind of joy in anything else that I’ve done in my life.”

This team created 48 forests in India in 4 years

Shubhendu Sharma used to work as an engineer before he quit his high paying job to start Afforestt, a company that makes natural forests in small spaces using the unique Miyawaki methodology to grow saplings. This allows them to convert any land into a self-sustainable forest in a couple of years. They’ve successfully grown 48 of these forests over 4 years.

Afforestt is a service provider for creating natural, wild, maintenance-free, native forests. Started in January 2011, Afforestt is a for-profit social enterprise on a mission to bring back our native forests.
Afforestt is on a  mission is to bring back lost forests, they do it by creating them.

The lawyer who cleaned 5 million kgs of trash from Versova beach

Afroz Shah, a Mumbai lawyer, and ocean lover took it upon himself to do something about the disgusting filth that covered Versova beach for so long. In 2015, he started a cleanliness drive that soon snowballed into the biggest beach cleanup in the world. Local residents started chipping in, and the UN also sent in volunteers to help. Over 85 weeks, they managed to clean 5 million freakin’ kgs of garbage and plastic, changing the face of the beach in the process.

With the support from the United Nations and over 300 volunteers, he had been able to remove 5 million kgs of filth and trash from the beach since October 2015, when he first started the drive.

A college close to nature

Bhoomi College has brought together individuals and communities through its Fellowship programmes, weekend programmes, conferences and workshops to learn, share and engage, aiming at ecological living on our planet.

The focus of all the courses offered is on participative learning that is deep, holistic and practical. Our programmes attempt to make learning engaging and enjoyable through hands-on work, group discussions, reflection and field trips. The well-designed curriculum and Interactions with inspiring thinkers and doers help make the courses meaningful and often transformative.

Seetha Ananthasivan graduated from IIM-Ahmedabad but decided she didn’t want to pursue management and wanted to learn about nature and educate people about it instead. This led her to establish Bhoomi College, on the outskirts of Bangalore. The campus has more than 100 species of trees and encourages people to live and work as a community. The college believes that nature is the primary teacher, and the courses here reflect that. It can’t have been easy for Seetha to pursue this way of life, especially in the 70s, but she seems to be doing a stellar job.