Jadavpur University has undertaken a tree audit to track the trees on its campus and identify dead trees. An official told PTI that this might be the first such tree audit initiative by a higher educational institution in eastern India.
Jadavpur University Registrar Snehamanju Basu told PTI that the audit had been launched about three years back on August 7, 2019 and it was a continuous process. "The Botany department is mainly behind the drive, as a part of which trees are being mapped via GPS, videographed and awarded number tags, There are 2,000 trees on the campus of which less than one per cent are dead, beyond any recovery. At times parts of the dead tree are replanted and survive. So the percentage of dead trees is little," she said.
The Botany department, in fact, has come up with a novel way to enumerate living trees. They do this by issuing a death certificate on the plants that die. The certificate is essentially a tag pasted on the body of the tree.
The motivation behind undertaking such an activity is to protect the green cover of the campus, says the Registrar. "We will do whatever is needed to see the vast plantations, which makes the JU so unique to others, does not face any threat. The students, faculty, the employees and everyone has stakes in the drive," she added, according to a report by PTI. The mapping of the trees will prevent them from being chopped down. In fact, the drive is said to have begun three years ago after members of the Jadavpur University Teachers' Association (JUTA) alleged that two trees on the campus had been cut by a group of people.
The array of trees in the 58-acre main campus of Jadavpur University ranges from mahogany, mango, Arjun, siris and others.
