BENGALURU: A team of four people has been travelling across the lanes of South Bengaluru in the scorching sun, mapping each tree on the street on an app. Project Vruksha, the technology-enabled census launched on March 17, aims to document all the trees in the city. The team took up Pattabhi Ram Nagar as the pilot ward and 20 days of hard work yielded exhaustive information on 100 trees on the app.
“So far the 100 trees marked in the census include Gulmohar, Rain tree, Mahogany and Pongame Oil tree species, which are around 40 years old,” said conservationist Vijay Nishanth, also known as Bengaluru’s Tree Doctor, who is spearheading the project. “As we are a small team, this mapping in ward 168 will take another month for us to complete. Then, we will move to Jayanagar east (ward 170). We are also testing the app for any technical issues and plan to upgrade it further,” Nishanth added, pointing that the data uploaded is static at present.
The app was launched to conduct a tree census in all 198 wards of Bengaluru to get real time digital documentation. For instance, should a tree be felled without permission, the app should be able to alert authorities or team members of the project through GPS. The app, which is currently not in public domain, includes features of the tree, such as species, girth, height and age, and whether it suffers from issues like diseases, entangled wires choking it, etc.
The team will share the data with BBMP in June, once the census picks up pace. “We need to recheck this data. Around World Environment Day on June 5, we aim to make this app open to the public. We will show the citizens and Palike how we have been documenting the trees. We will also open registrations for volunteers as it is not possible to cover 198 wards with such a small team. We are in need of trained volunteers who will not only be regular but know the subject,” Nishanth added.
Project Vruksha Foundation has also received queries from Mysuru and places in Rajasthan and Gujarat on the idea of a tech-enabled tree census. They are already coming across volunteers in Mysuru who want to take up a similar census there.
“The purpose is to make the tree census data available in public domain in the future. Another benefit would be finding more lung spaces in the city where saplings can be planted and grown into trees,” Nishanth said, revealing that the trees they are mapping now were planted in the 1980s by retired IFS officer Seturam Neginhal.