Say hello to the ‘Treeman of India’: Vishnu Lamba Founder and Director of ‘Shri Kalpataru Sansthan’

Deforestation is quite a serious issue that we have all seen a lot of happen in the past few decades. Over the years, a lot of greenly lit pastures and forested areas have been replaced with industries, housing infrastructure, plazas and so on. While establishments of such sort are being built, the repercussions of the same on the biodiversity, climate and in turn the human life is drastic. This thought is often left out and then when the air in these urban areas thickens, the pollution worsens, the oxygen level declines, and global warming gets real.

However, as there are those who favor deforestation, there are also those who do not, one of the latter is Vishnu Lamba from Rajasthan. His work speaks for itself with having planted lakhs of trees and concurrently working with his team to save even more. Former president of India, Pranab Mukherjee has gone as far to name Lamba as ‘Treeman of India’.

The numbers go as Vishnu having planted 8.5 lakh trees with no government support, saved over 13 lakh trees and distributed 11 lakh trees at absolutely no cost to people. The treeman himself is based out of a small village going by the name of ‘Tonk’ in Rajasthan where his work first started from and has now reached as far as lakhs of people, young and old from 22 other states helping him with his endeavor. Lamba has been planting saplings as early as at the age of 7 years-old, when he would even steal saplings so that he could plant even more trees. He goes on to preach people constantly to plant trees as he believes that every person should at least have planted 5 trees in the span of their lives.

Vishnu has also been applauded and given more than 100 awards for his philanthropical work including the National Rajiv Gandhi Environment Award, Amrita Devi Bishnoi Award, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Rashtra Nirman Award, Green Idol Award amongst many others.

Other causes he works for…

Apart from his work regarding the planting of trees, Lamba also works against the hunting or killing of birds as well as miners. He has been known to have opposed quite a few mining mafias in Rajasthan which has also gotten him in trouble. He was also appointed as the ambassador of Green Army by the forest minister of the government of Maharashtra.

Currently Lamba has been working as the founder and director of ‘Shri Kalpataru Sansthan’ which is an institution known for having been planting saplings regularly over the past 15 years. The institute and NGO have been campaigning and working for issues relating with animals, birds, and trees. Their commitment to making 100 villages, ideal villages or ‘Kalp Grams’ in the country is something they are working on.