You might not be aware, but the Earth loses about 18 million acres of forests—every single year. In fact, since 1990, 129 million acres of forest have been lost (that’s equivalent to nearly the size of South Africa).

Besides affecting the humans who live on the planet, this stat also greatly affects plants and animals, many of which have lost their natural habitats.

Sure, to most people, it may feel like something bigger than you or something uncontrollable—but Sebastião Salgado didn’t feel that way. He and his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado decided to take a stand against deforestation and see how they could help.

You see, Sebastião is a nature photographer. In the 1990s, he had photographed his native area of Brazil, which was once a lush tropical rainforest. But when he returned home to find the area with no wildlife or trees or anything how it was before, he and Lélia knew they had to do something. This was their home, after all.

“The land was as sick as I was – everything was destroyed,” Salgado said back in 2015. “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.”

Of course, the job was much too big for two people to do all on their own. So in 2000, the two wound up forming an environmental organization called Instituto Terra, where more than 20 people volunteered to help restore the ecosystem and replant the forest.

“There is a single being which can transform CO2 to oxygen, which is the tree. We need to replant the forest. You need forest with native trees, and you need to gather the seeds in the same region you plant them or the serpents and the termites won’t come. And if you plant forests that don’t belong, the animals don’t come there and the forest is silent,” Sebastião explains.

The group worked hard. We mean real hard. And sure enough, trees have sprouted up again, the forest began to thrive again, and wildlife has returned to the land. To be exact, precisely 172 species of birds, 33 species of mammals, 293 species of plants, 15 species of reptiles and 15 species of amphibians have returned. Additionally, the couple planted over 4 million saplings of 293 specifies of trees and restored 1,502 acres of the forest.

Besides animals, the regrowth has brought back rainfall and filled empty creeks with water as well. After 20 years of being completely desolate and barren, there’s finally a real forest again, just how it once.

Unbelievable!

“We need to listen to the words of the people on the land,” Salgado said. “Nature is the earth and it is other beings and if we don’t have some kind of spiritual return to our planet, I fear that we will be compromised.”

If you’ve ever wanted to do your part to help out the ecosystem, we hope the Salgados were able to give you some inspiration. What do you think of how this couple rebuilt the barren land? Can you believe the results?