Photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, launched a rather ambitious restoration project on Salgado's family ranch in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in 1998. A lot of the 600-hectare (about 1,480-acre) property is largely barren after years of logging, cattle grazing, and erosion. Lélia proposed restoring the land with the native Atlantic Forest that had once covered the region. The couple established the Instituto Terra and began planting native species that were collected from the surrounding ecosystem. Since then, more than 2.7 million native trees have been planted on the property. KfW Development Bank , which has supported the project, says the restored forest protects hundreds of springs now, and has become habitat for many plant and animal species that had disappeared from the area.
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Restoring a forest meant rebuilding an entire ecosystem
The project focused on native trees rather than fast-growing commercial species. Seeds were collected from regional forests and grown in a specific nursery before being planted across hillsides and stream valleys that had undergone degradation. As the trees matured, the land began retaining more water and soil erosion declined. Springs that had dried up started flowing again, and wildlife gradually returned. Instituto Terra reports that more than 170 bird species, 33 mammal species, 15 amphibian species and 172 reptile species have been recorded in the restored area, along with hundreds of native plant species.
The project expanded beyond one family's land
Instituto Terra was formally established in 1998 as a non-profit environmental organization, and its work soon expanded beyond restoring the Salgado family's property. The institute developed environmental education programs for students and teachers, trained landowners in forest restoration techniques, and promoted the protection of rivers and watersheds across Brazil's Rio Doce Valley. It also established one of the country's largest nurseries dedicated to native Atlantic Forest species, and produces hundreds of thousands of seedlings each year for restoration projects. The work takes place within the Atlantic Forest, which is one of the world's most threatened tropical ecosystems, where only a small fraction of the original forest remains after centuries of logging, agriculture, and urban expansion. Today, the restored property serves as a demonstration site for ecological restoration, showing how degraded pastureland can recover when native vegetation is replanted and protected over the long term
A restored forest that continues to grow
The transformation of the Salgado ranch took decades, and many of the trees planted during the first years are now mature enough to support a functioning forest ecosystem. Water sources have recovered, native wildlife has become more common, and the landscape bears little resemblance to the cattle pasture that Sebastião Salgado found when he first returned. Instituto Terra continues managing the reserve while expanding restoration work elsewhere in Brazil. The organization also trains students, researchers and conservation professionals, using the former ranch as a living example of large-scale forest recovery. More than 25 years after the first seedlings went into the ground, the project is still one of Brazil's best-known examples of ecological restoration carried out on privately owned land.
