BENGALURU: Vijay Nishanth, founder of Vruksha Foundation, that has saved thousands of trees in Bengaluru will soon extend his services in Mysuru, to save the green cover of the heritage city.
A street-level census (study and survey) of trees will be conducted by the volunteers in December, under which the exotic and indigenous trees will be listed out. He is coordinating with a couple of NGOs including Arivu Education Trust in Mysuru in the regard.
Initially, the programme will be launched in a few wards as a pilot project. Later it will be extended to the remaining wards. Help from local elected representatives, stakeholders, and concerned officers will be sought for the project.
Also plans are on card to conduct a series of awareness programmes to educate students and citizen about the importance of conservation of trees; the need of trees in cities, etc. They will also be involved in a tree census which help to save the green cover of the city.
The volunteers will collect the information about every tree such as, diameter of the tree trunk, height, lifespan, type of plant, health and also suggest measures as how they should be protected, if they are affected by any diseases.
The volunteers have already done census of 200 trees located on Bangalore-Mysore Ring Road Junction in the month of June. The data of every tree and saplings collected will be updated in the Vruksha.com, via a specially designed software of the team.
Each trees and saplings detail will be available on the website Vruksha.com. The specially designed software will provide real time data about the growth of the plants, height, characteristics of the tree, width of the street, where to plant trees; and other information will be updated in the website.
A user can obtain the details by logging on to the website. By selecting the wards, area the user can find out the trees in the area and whether the trees are located in the left side or right side of the street will also be available. This will be helpful for citizens to know the types of tree located in their street, which encourages them to protect them.
Vijay who was spurred towards conservation from his young age, says, “Mysuru has a good mix of exotic and indigenous species which has to be conserved. Even NGOs in Mysuru are concerned about this. Bengaluru has a 6.6 per cent tree cover while Mysuru has 33 per cent. Whatever we lost in Bengaluru, we should try and prevent the same in Mysuru. The programme will be extended to other districts soon.”
He further adds, “The tree census has to be conducted once in every four years, but it is not done. Cutting one single tree will lead to an ecological loss. Mysuru being a heritage city and a tourist centre, it is very important to have green which helps in attracting more visitors. City planner must concentrate on sustainable development where greening and development go hand in hand. It is time every city should take up greening, which helps to prevent pollution, and control rise in temperature,” he said.
Students do their bit
Vijay Nishanth was in Mysuru on Sunday to deliver a talk on ‘Trees Conservation, Treatment, and Transplantation’ to students of Arivu School. He showed students how they track trees with the help of software and GPS through Vruksha.com in Jayanagar, Bangaluru, where 8,000 trees are GPS located and helps in monitoring trees.
Praddhymna, a Class 10 student of Arivu School said, “The talk was useful and we realised trees too have life and we have to protect them. I learned about tree transplant, techniques for conserving old trees; how trees are poisoned and how the infections can be stopped — it was very informative.”