Forest rangers transform barren land into a sea of trees

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Huamushan Forest Farm, a forest filled with greenery and wild flowers, has applied to be the next provincial forest park in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. The forest range was a human miracle – transformed from a barren land to a sea of trees by eight elderly forest rangers.

Located in the mountainous region of Luliang county of the city Qujing, Huamushan was once a deserted land back in the 1980s.

Due to the alpine climate and rocky landform, the land was not only infertile but also troubled by natural disasters like hailstorms and water and soil erosion.

In 1980, 41-year-old local Wang Xiaomiao decided to improve people’s living conditions by planting trees and transforming the poor land into forest. With another seven volunteers, the group started the "mission impossible" challenge.

The eight forest rangers in 1980s. /The Paper Photo

Two major difficulties stood in their way: the arid soil texture and the low seedling survival rate.

“At the first try, whenever our hoes met the land, metal sparkles burst [because the land was too dry],” one of the rangers, 83-year-old Wang Deying told The Paper.

To dig up land for seed planting, their hands and feet were always chapped and blistered.

Hands of the forest rangers. /The Paper Photo

When they managed to earth the tree seeds, new problems emerged as animals stole the seeds for food and other seeds didn’t survive due to poor water retention capability.

The team didn’t give up. After trial and error, they invented a new way of seedling, nurturing seeds in nutrients over the winter and planting saplings only during the rainy season. In this way, they raised the survival rate to 90 percent.

In four years, the eight forest rangers planted nearly five million square meters of trees.

Two rangers taking care of the trees. /People's Daily Photo

Seeing their success, neighboring towns invited the rangers to help plant trees around the county. From 1985 to 1995, the eight-man team led over 700 people participating in man-made forest building, creating over 900 square kilometers of greenery.

As the sea of trees spread over the county’s arid land, Wang Xiaomiao and his teammates went back to Huamushan and continued working as forest rangers until 2010, when many of them reached their eighties.

The rangers gathering after retirement in 2012. /Xinhua Photo

Under their nurture and protection over the decades, no mountain fire ever broke out at Huamushan, and the forests have brought improved air and soil quality of the towns in the region.

Two years ago, the rangers’ leader Wang Xiaomiao and one member Wang Jiashou passed away.

“Wang Xiaomiao once said that people may pass away, but trees grow everlastingly,” Wang Deying told The Paper.

One of the forest rangers Wang Deying, 83, still walks around the forest farm. /The Paper Photo

“About our past? It’s all written on the trees,” he said.