Jadav Payeng Began Planting a Brahmaputra Sandbar in 1979 and Received the Padma Shri in 2015 for the Molai Forest, Which Press Reports Put at 550 Hectares

In 1979 a 16-year-old named Jadav Payeng began planting bamboo on a bare sandbar of the Brahmaputra near Kokilamukh, in Jorhat district, Assam. The woodland that grew there is now called Molai, after his nickname, and press reports from Mongabay (2014) and The Shillong Times (2015) put it at about 550 hectares. The Government of India listed him among the Padma Shri awardees on 25 January 2015, and the Prime Minister named him in a Mann Ki Baat radio address on 28 February 2021.

Payeng belongs to the Mising community, one of Assam’s indigenous peoples. By the accounts of Mongabay and The Shillong Times he lives with his wife Binita and their three children in a small hut in the forest, and sells milk from his cattle and buffaloes for a living.

The sandbar, the snakes and the first bamboo

Mongabay’s 2014 profile says the trigger came in 1979, when a flood on the Brahmaputra left scores of dead snakes on a large sandbar near his home. “The snakes died in the heat, without any tree cover,” Payeng told The Times of India, as Mongabay quotes him. The Shillong Times adds that he started with 20 bamboo seedlings. In Payeng’s account, forest department staff told him nothing would grow on the sand and suggested he try bamboo.

“It was painful, but I did it,” he says of the bamboo in the same article, which also records that he left his schooling and his home in Kokilamukh to live on the bar. The sandbar first turned into a bamboo thicket. He then began planting other trees, and the forest grew from there.

The site is reached by boat from the south bank at Kokilamukh, according to The Shillong Times. For the island that many accounts link it to, see Majuli, the river island. Mongabay notes that Kaziranga National Park lies on the same river just downstream of Jorhat; the park’s rhino count and floodplain are covered in Kaziranga National Park.

A government scheme ends and one labourer stays

In 1980 the social forestry division of Golaghat district started a five-year tree-planting scheme on 200 hectares at Aruna Chapori, 5 kilometres from Kokilamukh, to fight soil erosion. Mongabay and The Shillong Times both record that Payeng worked on it as a labourer. When the work ended, the others left and he stayed on the sandbar, tending what had been planted and adding more.

What forest officials found in 2008

Mongabay reports that the Assam forest department first noticed the forest in 2008. Officials had gone looking for more than 100 wild elephants that had retreated there after damaging property in Aruna Chapori village. HuffPost, writing in 2012, also gives 2008 as the year officials learned of it.

“We were surprised to find such a dense forest on the sandbar,” Gunin Saikia, then an Assistant Conservator of Forests, is quoted as saying. Mongabay quotes Saikia as adding that villagers whose homes the elephants had damaged wanted the forest cut down, and that Payeng dared them to kill him instead.

The Shillong Times reports that the forest department has helped him protect the forest since 2008. It quotes a Jorhat district forest official as saying a herd of around 100 elephants visits every year and stays about six months. India’s elephant reserves and the national census are described in Asiatic elephants in India. The same article lists deer, birds including a large number of vultures, Royal Bengal tigers and Indian rhinoceros, and says bamboo covers more than 300 hectares. Mongabay says reports indicate that wildlife once absent from the sandbar, such as Bengal tigers, has recolonised the forest.

Payeng has said that tigers killed about 100 of his cattle and buffaloes and that he did not complain, because in his view people moving into wild habitat had caused the conflict. Mongabay also reports that when poachers tried to kill rhinos in the forest, he told forest officials and traps were seized.

From a local story to the Padma Shri

The wider attention came in stages. On 22 April 2012 the School of Environmental Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University held a function in his honour in Delhi, and The Shillong Times and The Better India both say the university’s vice-chancellor, Sudhir Kumar Sopory, called him the “Forest Man of India”. The Shillong Times adds that the Indian Institute of Forest Management honoured him at its annual event in October 2013. It says he shot to fame through a 2012 documentary, The Molai Forest, produced by Jitu Kalita, who lives near Payeng’s house according to Blue Dot Living.

Films followed. Aarti Shrivastava made Foresting Life in 2013. William Douglas McMaster’s Forest Man, a 16-minute film from Canada, is also dated 2013 by Films for the Earth, and Mongabay says it won the Best Documentary award in the emerging filmmakers programme at the American Pavilion at Cannes in 2014. McMaster raised more than $8,300 on Kickstarter for its post-production, Mongabay says.

The Press Information Bureau’s release of 25 January 2015 lists “Jadav Molai Peyang”, category Others, Assam, among the 75 Padma Shri awardees in a list of 104 Padma awards. The Padma Shri is India’s fourth-highest civilian honour. EastMojo reported on 3 March 2020 that he received the Karmayogi Award 2020 at an event in New Delhi, where he said his work was “above religion or politics”.

The Prime Minister’s Mann Ki Baat of 28 February 2021, as rendered by the PIB, said Payeng has received a Padma award and “actively contributed in raising about 300 hectares of plantations” on Majuli Island, and that he motivates people toward plantation and biodiversity conservation. On 4 July 2023 he spoke at the plantation drive on the 16th Inaugural Day of IIM Shillong, according to a PIB release. In April 2025 Assam Agricultural University conferred honorary doctorates on him and on the conservationist Purnima Devi Barman at its 25th convocation in Jorhat, as India Today NE and The Assam Tribune reported.

A second forest, and the fires of winter 2025 to 2026

Payeng and his daughter Munmuni have also been growing a newer plantation, Molai Kathoni 2.0, near the Baghmora eco-camp on the Brahmaputra bank in the Jorhat-Majuli forest division. PTI, in the version published by The Federal, reports that saplings were planted there in 2022. A fire broke out on the evening of Sunday 28 December 2025. A senior forest official put the loss at more than 5,500 saplings and said no person was hurt and an investigation had been ordered. Munmuni Payeng, who led the firefighting with volunteers and students, said the fire was set deliberately. Outlook Traveller carried the same figures on 2 January 2026.

On 19 February 2026 The Assam Tribune reported another fire at the site, described as the third in recent months, covering nearly 100 hectares. It says many mature trees survived. Munmuni Payeng alleged arson and asked the state for a permanent forest department camp in the area. The coverage opened for this article reports no arrest as of 5 November 2026.

Where the accounts differ

Area. Mongabay and The Shillong Times give about 550 hectares, and Blue Dot Living gives 550 hectares for the forest he planted and about 1,000 hectares for the reserve. The Mann Ki Baat text gives about 300 hectares. No published survey by the Assam Forest Department turned up in the sources opened here, so the 550 figure rests on press accounts.

Place. The Shillong Times places the forest at Kokilamukh in Jorhat district. EastMojo and the Prime Minister’s address describe it as part of Majuli, and forest officials quoted by PTI put the newer plantation in the Jorhat-Majuli forest division.

The government scheme. Blue Dot Living says it was abandoned in 1983 and Mongabay’s second article says it was abandoned midway. The Shillong Times and The Better India say it ran its five years. EastMojo dates Payeng’s own planting to the early 1980s rather than 1979.

The title. Sopory is named in The Shillong Times and The Better India as the source of “Forest Man of India”. Mongabay’s second article credits the former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Elephants. A Jorhat forest official in The Shillong Times gives about 100. In the PIB’s report of his 2023 talk, Payeng says the forest is home to 115 elephants along with tigers, leopards and rhinoceros.

Birth year. Accounts disagree, and this article gives none.

Mongabay’s 2014 article says Payeng planted to fight erosion on the sandbar, and no hydrological study of the forest turned up in the sources opened here. The PIB’s 2015 Padma list spells his name “Peyang”.