Neighbourhood Trees Campaign Kicks Off in City
The India Biodiversity Portal’s neighbourhood trees campaign kicked off on Tuesday and saw nearly 400 users from all over the country upload their observations on the portal.
The campaign, which is being conducted online through the India Biodiversity Portal at http://treesindia.indiabiodiversity.org/ Bangaloreans, also kicked off local campaigns that saw a wide participation. The campaign ends on Sunday.
Speaking to Express, founder member of the campaign, R Prabhakar, said there was a surge in the registrations on the first day of the campaign with people registering between 250-300 tree observations from 30 locations across the country. “This shows that there are many nature enthusiasts out there. At this rate, we will have a lot many coming forward. We never expected this kind of response,” he said.
He said a tree walk will also be held in the city on Saturday and Sunday, during which people will upload observations locally. “We are trying to crowdsource biodiversity information. But people have to get some more clarity on how to upload their observations,” he said.
Prabhakar said many users were uploading pictures of multiple species as part of the same observation. “Each observation should have photos of only one tree species taken at different angles,” he explained.
Nearly 1,386 different species were identified on the first day. “Experts will come online and identify these species and then suggest common and scientific names. That way, we will identify many trees,” Prabhakar said.
The initiative is meant to document tree species and their distributions with an aim to conserve tree diversity. It is being organised by ‘treesindia.in’ at India Biodiversity Portal with The French Institute, ATREE, SeasonWatch, Nizhal in Chennai, Keystone Foundation in Kotagiri, Strand Life Sciences, Azim Premji University, Wipro, Earthian, eflora India and others.