83-year-old Antonio Vicente has spent the last four decades of his life bringing the jungles of his childhood back to life. Today, his efforts are being rewarded, as the 【小题1】(complete) deserted land has become a beautiful jungle with wildlife again.
It was 1973 when Antonio began his work 【小题2】 a weekend hobby. However, it soon became a permanent way of life. Antonio spends whole days and nights in his jungle, 【小题3】(surround) with rats and foxes and eating banana sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Over the last 20 years, he 【小题4】(plant) about 50,000 trees on his land. As the forest grew, the water returned. Then the animals started making a home there. Today, the forest is alive with the sounds of birds and 【小题5】(insect) living there, and more species are settling in every year. “If you ask me 【小题6】 my family are, I would say all this right here, each one of these that I planted from a seed ,”he said.
Impressive as his lifelong 【小题7】(contribute) to reforestation(重新造林) is, his story is a very rare one. Data shows that nearly 19,770 acres of Brazilian rainforest 【小题8】(destroy) between August 2015 and July 2016. That makes Antonio’s work seem like 【小题9】 drop in the bucket(桶), but just imagine if we had more people like him, who cares 【小题10】(many) about water and clean air than money.