PANAJI
While the government may be planning to wipe out vast acres of forests in the Western Ghats, a group of young Goans have gotten together to promote the use of technology to help protect the trees around us, and look after them.
In a presentation via Google Meet on Sunday, the Living Heritage Foundation along with Dev Cluster, Goa’s tech community, enumerated the benefits of the “Living Heritage App” which allows Goans to geo-tag trees.
This means that with the aid of the app, the common person can create a database of trees across India, thus helping in their conservation and protection.
This is the first ever app of its kind in Goa.
The Foundation believes that to protect our biodiversity, we must document its presence. Therefore, the app is targeted at the common person who doesn’t have a tech background.
Speaking on behalf of the Living Heritage Foundation that developed the app, project coordinator Renuka Figueiredo said that the app is intended to get people to look up and appreciate the variety of trees around, and better understand them.
“Very often, we don’t know the kind of ecological relevance trees have, or what birds go to which tree. With the app, anyone can now tag a tree, even if they don’t know the name of the tree,” she said.
In addition to geo-mapping a tree, the app also allows volunteers to monitor the health of trees, figure out reasons why trees have stopped fruiting, or why they are dying. By keeping a track of all these parameters, it would also help environmentalists to better understand the environment of that area. And every time a tree is in grave danger, volunteers are sent an SOS alert.
The app will also help us to keep a track of compensatory afforestation. What this means is when forests are cleared for developmental projects, and the party is asked to grow an equal number of trees elsewhere, there is no way to keep track of whether they have actually done it or not. But now with the Living Heritage App, it will be much easier to keep track of.
In future, the Foundation aims to let people track other forms of bio-diversity on the app as well.
The app was launched just a month ago, and Figueiredo said that the Foundation wishes to make Goa a model state to protect bio-diversity.
The group of young and innovative Goans hopes that Goans who are genuinely interested in environmental conservation comes forward to volunteer to map and protect our trees.
