Reforestation Facts

At 17 years old, an Indian man named Jadav Payeng started planting trees on a barren sandbar. At age 47, he lives in his own 1360 acre forest which now houses rhinos, tigers, deer, apes and elephants.

Oregon's Coast Range forest was written off as dead for good after repeated wildfires. Some believed the land was too damaged to ever grow trees again. Oregonians proved them wrong. Between 1949 and 1972, crews hand planted 72 million seedlings. Schoolchildren bused in planted nearly a million of those trees themselves. In 1973, Governor Tom McCall stood in the regrown forest and renamed it Tillamook State Forest.