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DCL
When Ethiopian-born Gashaw Tahir returned to his home country from the U.S., where he is a citizen, he saw such environmental degradation that he started a movement that has now put more than one million trees into Ethiopian soil.
He recalls that visit in a four-minute video: "The land that I know was green and everything was excellent. When I went there, I was shocked because it was gone. The land was degraded and eroded because the mountain area was deforested."
His first move was to ask the local government for two acres of land—they gave it to him—and to start educating young people about soil erosion and other effects of deforestation, and how to plant trees. By the end of their first year at work, they had planted close to 500,000 seedlings.
That, apparently, was enough to get the government to hand over 11,000 more acres of land for free. So he hired 450 young people and they've now planted more than a million trees.
The video is worth watching—by the end, he talks about the noticeable difference just in these first two years. Bamboo branches now stand taller than he does, and monkeys have returned home. If one man can do that much...
