What we do — and why it matters.
Kesu Environment Foundation is an organisation working on the preservation of indigenous and heritage trees, and their documented connection to religious institutions — gurdwaras, temples, shrines, deras — across Punjab, Haryana, Jammu, Rajasthan and Pakistan.
Across these regions, many religious sites are named after the tree in whose shade a Guru or saint once rested. Amb Sahib. Imli Sahib. Ber Sahib. Tahli Sahib. Nim Sahib. Jandi Sahib. In most cases, that tree has been propagated, generation after generation, by the community that grew up around it. In other cases — too many — the original tree has been lost to modernisation, and with it a piece of the story.
Our visible work is the documentation of these patches: mapping the surviving trees, recording the story that connects each tree to its spiritual site, and publishing the record in a form accessible to villagers, researchers, government bodies, and the diaspora.
But the tree-and-story work is only one part of a broader environmental mandate. The Foundation is also active in:
- Promoting the preservation of indigenous and heritage trees
- Creating a nursery of high quality native plants
- Establishing a Community Forest
- Solid Waste Management (technical expertise)
- Water Management, public awareness campaigns, and disaster management
- Geo-tagging and documentation of heritage trees
- Planting special trees in gurdwaras, villages, and other places associated with trees
- Removal of invasive species from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Kashmir
- Partnering with government and CSRs, and open to donations
These are the programmes that government bodies and CSR partners engage with directly. The heritage-tree documentation is one visible, shareable output — and for many visitors, the natural entry point — but it is not the whole of the work.
How the work happens
Each patch in our database is visited by our field team. We take photographs. We record a GPS coordinate. We speak with the local community, the shrine custodians, and any elders who know the tree's story. We check the tree's condition — is it healthy? Is it being propagated? Is it protected by any formal arrangement?
The written record is reviewed by a senior researcher before publication. Sources are cited where possible. The record is then published on this site and, with the permission of the custodians, submitted to relevant government and academic bodies.
This is slow, careful work. It is only worthwhile if it is done thoroughly.
Partnerships
The Foundation is a registered not-for-profit. We welcome partnerships with government bodies, corporate CSR programmes, and individual donors — including the diaspora communities whose grandparents remember the trees now being documented.
If you are a government body, CSR head, or donor, please read our partnership page and get in touch. If you are a community member with knowledge of a tree-site pairing we have not yet recorded, please submit it for our team to verify.