A forgotten engineer restored 23,000 hectares of Brazilian rainforest

In 1977, a young forest engineer named Renato Moraes de Jesus was sent to a remote, 200 hectare tract of Atlantic Forest in northern Espirito Santo. The mining company that owned the land had originally purchased it to harvest hardwood for railway sleepers, but they had no clear plan for the property. De Jesus moved into a crumbling house alone, where he spent his nights listening to opossums scurrying through the roof and his days working to secure a single functional telephone.