Man plants millions of trees across India to restore ecosystems

For nearly half a century, “Peepal Baba”, a 60-year-old man in India, has been planting trees to rebuild lost vegetation and improve the environment.

Known as Swami Prem Parivartan, “Peepal Baba” (“the father of trees”) began planting saplings as a young man and now leads one of India’s oldest citizen reforestation movements.

He and his network of friends, volunteers, and supporters have bypassed waiting for government action to restore green spaces, particularly in the heavily polluted megacity of New Delhi, which has a population of 30 million. “Peepal Baba” prioritizes land management over simply counting trees planted, believing that how land is cared for is more important than the number of trees.

His organization, “Give Me Trees”, reports restoring plant cover across more than 270,000 hectares of land throughout India, an area larger than two times the size of Delhi. The man’s passion for trees began in childhood with his grandmother and has continued through decades of travel across India on a scooter. During these trips, people gave him the nickname “Peepal Baba”, which he adopted because he felt it resonated more with the public than the term “environmentalist”.

He estimates having travelled 540,000 kilometers, more than 13 times around the Earth, to encourage planting. His work now extends to social media, with over 1.6 million followers on Instagram, and a growing number of on-the-ground volunteers, focusing not just on planting but also on soil restoration.