Grant Pereira is fond of saying that he's the National Parks Board's oldest volunteer. The "godfather" of conservation in Singapore, he’s been volunteering for environmental causes for over 50 years.

Grant lives to bury his hands in the soil. Now in his 70s, he’s been planting trees relentlessly for well over half his life. Literally, his fingerprints are all over public and private green spaces, from the Botanical Gardens to Tampines Eco Green and Pasir Ris Park’s Butterfly Garden, where the Green Volunteers do their regular work.

He started the Green Volunteers in 1997, and through outreach in schools, universities, and corporations, Grant has won countless people over to nature’s side and his cause too. It is his life’s work.

In the last 25 years alone, Grant has planted around 300,000 trees. He’s not one for accolades, not when there’s so much work left to do for the Earth. Closer to home, he closely monitors the impact of climate change on the little red dot of Singapore.

Warning bells are ringing louder, with the UN projecting the extinction of a million species of plants and animals globally. There has been a 69 per cent decline in global populations of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians since 1970. 

Biodiversity, with all the different kinds of life from animals, plants, insects and microorganisms, is part of how nature supports life and provides for humanity – from food, water, medicine, oxygen, and materials to creating shelter as well.

Singapore, all 720 square kilometres of it, sits in the centre of a biodiversity hotbed. 20 per cent of the earth’s plant and animal life is found in Southeast Asia. In Singapore alone, more than 2,000 species of native plants, over 200 species of birds, butterflies, and dozens of reptiles, amphibians, and fish call the place home.

With so much at stake, change is needed urgently. Now. Action must kick in. We need to get our hands dirty—both literally and figuratively—to save our home and all the living things in it.

The first step is to plant and protect our trees. The Green Volunteers show us how it's done.

Carlyn once hugged a tree and saved its life. 

The local council had plans to chop down the big casuarina trees in her neighbourhood—many of them around twenty years old—and replace them with saplings. For her, that triggered a slew of letters to ministers, local councils, and the media to save the grand old trees.

Carlyn has been bang in the middle of wildlife, trees, and everything else throughout her life, whether it was fishing with her father as a child, learning to farm organic food in the mountains of Italy, or turning the soil with the Green Volunteers in Pasir Ris Park today.

On the day the men came with their machines, Carlyn stood between them and the tree. She did not budge.

That was a couple of decades ago, and to this day, Carlyn chuckles at the memory.

“I've always been vocal, but that really showed me how one person can spark change.”

Many of those trees remain there today.

The former journalist is the Green Volunteers' unofficial public relations person even as she continues to work at the Butterfly Garden.

“Shaun has a degree in chemical engineering, but he’s now a landscape gardener. His mother still blames me.” For Grant this thought still makes him laugh.

Shaun is quick to add: “My mum is fine. Now she understands that your kids won’t turn out the way you want them to.” Tall and spare with an easy smile and a ton of energy, it was not hard to see that Shaun feels deeply for what he does. 

He met Grant on a volunteering trip while studying for his degree and was hooked.

After that trip Shaun had a new mission. He planted everything he could get hold of, wherever he could, around his university’s dormitory. 

15 years later, that passion burns ever brighter. Shaun found his way to professional landscaping, where he’s been ever since university.

Busy with work, studying on the side and with a brand new baby in the family, Shaun still works at the butterfly garden in Pasir Ris Park, no matter the weather. 

“I have to get all these leaves onto the base of the bordering plants.”  He gets to work on a huge pile of black garbage bags under a grand old rain tree. “Grant talks the cleaners in Pasir Ris Park into collecting them for us, and we use them to make leaf mulch.”

Leaf mulch helps retain water, creates weed barriers, and safeguards earthworms to ensure soil health.

He wheelbarrows bag after bag around the edges of the rewilded zone, heaping piles of leaves on the base of various trees and bushes. When the storm hits, he dons a hat and continues working, in his element, out here among the elements.

Zong is yet another of the many young people whose lives Grant has changed through his outreach to schools. The then-student met Grant the same way Shaun met him –through the university volunteering programme. On Zong's first trip to Thailand on one of Grant’s many conservation projects, he probably planted two or three hundred trees.

Those trees and many others in the years ahead were planted in the sure knowledge that there are benefits the evergreen bestows on us all. There’s a lot a tree does over and above, providing shade to the weary - be it man or beast. They absorb carbon dioxide and pollution, temper the effects of climate change and they provide habitats for many other living things.

Those few weeks for Zong were weeks of realisation and formation for this Gen Z-er. The path ahead clearly needed repaving. Planting trees, out of mobile range, without the convenience of home, Zong affirmed his commitment to volunteering and the value of giving back, in his own life.

"I feel like I have received a lot in my life. Giving gives me meaning. I feel like we didn't come to this world to just receive everything. Our earth is our home right? We need to give back to people and to the environment. So by giving to people, I'm giving back."

Thanks to the efforts of Carlyn, Shaun, Zhong and many others, the Green Volunteers have become a force of nature.

A group that started out with around 50, has now seen thousands of volunteers support the cause over the years.

Over the years, they have gotten their feet wet and their hands dirty all across Singapore, greening parks, cleaning up mangroves and even planting trees and gardens in over 50 schools where they also teach and encourage young minds on the importance of looking after nature.

The impact is felt beyond Singapore’s shores as well, where they have done environmental projects in Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and many other places.

Back in Pasir Ris, after 27 years of work on their butterfly garden plot, an area that once had a few plants and some lonely bugs…

... is now an Eden with thousands of plants of all varieties,  teeming with biodiversity. Butterflies, dragonflies, stingless bees, jungle fowl, monitor lizards, hawks, waterhens and terrapins are just some that now call this area of Pasir Ris Park home.

To make room for even more biodiversity, Grant and the Green Volunteers used fallen tree trunks and started a “bug hotel” last year to create a home for insect pollinators. He is thrilled with this latest property investment. “Bug hotels are beneficial for gardens as they attract bugs and insects that support biodiversity. They are essential for the ecological balance of the world.”

While these efforts saw Grant gain national recognition in the 2022 President’s Volunteerism and Philanthropy Awards for his devotion of a lifetime in rebuilding the environment, seeing nature thrive for future generations is what he considers his truest reward.

While much has been done to green the nation by these ecological warriors, biodiversity still needs nurturing and trees need planting. Especially as the planet continues to reel from the impact of climate change.

Caring for the environment is a long game, and it is never too late to start. A seed planted today is the foundation of a forest tomorrow. 

The Green Volunteers welcome anyone who wants to lend a hand, clear mangroves, learn how to care for the environment, plant a tree, and help protect our planet.