Hi all,
I just attended the Kent Heritage Tree project launch event. This
comprised of a few presentations about the overall project and about how
interesting trees can be. The project is a national lottery funded, BTCV
administered 5 year effort to raise awareness of trees through various
means. This includes nature training courses, cultural events, tree
planting and artistic works. The total project cost is £650000. The core
of the project is an attempt to survey 10,000 trees in Kent. They
apparently want to train 300 tree surveyors and hope that some will
become long term tree wardens. The turn out was good at the first
launch, with about 150+ people attending, by my estimate. The local MP
Damian Green was there, etc. There was surprisingly little information
about the surveying itself. They mentioned it would be possible to do
paper or electronic submissions. They also accept tip-offs from the
general public and tree surveyors in the area would be alerted that a
tree needed checking. It is planned that once the surveyor checked the
tree, it would immediately appear on their slippy map. It seems that
surveyors would need to do a tree surveyor course, because they are
interested in not merely a tree's location, but also condition, physical
size, other species on and near it, local history, photographic records,
etc. They do not have any requirements for how much time one needs to
commit beyond attending the surveying course, but they ask that you do
at least bit. The offered free tree identification leaflets, OS maps
(boo hiss), and the loan of GPS receivers and digital cameras. The data
will be used to monitor trees condition, raise awareness with tree
owners, to be a historical archive "domesday book", and to press for
more legal projection of heritage trees. The thinking is that monitoring
of trees will at least help to prevent any human instigated "accidents"
befalling the trees (like some sort of arboreal Amnesty International).
They consider any notable tree to be heritage, by the way.
If you want to do the minimum to get involved, just register as an
interested party and attend the tree surveyor course. If you wonder if
it is worth your while at all or you want a free lunch, consider going
to a launch event. The next are:
4 Jun 2011 - 10:00 Canterbury
10 Jul 2011 - 10:00 Tonbridge
http://kentheritagetrees.btcv.org.uk/
I talked briefly to the project manager Viginia Hodge. BTCV are seeking
to raise awareness and I said I would do what I could by getting the OSM
community involved. Even if people survey heritage trees into the OSM
db, rather than their project, it would still be useful. Or contribute
to both... I might start a wikiproject on trees or at least update the
wiki with some standardised tags for what BTCV are surveying.
I suggested that their data should be opened for any use and they seemed
receptive to the idea, but further discussions are needed. They already
have a smaller tree database around the Ashford area. I didn't get into
what license would be appropriate, because that would have opened a can
of worms...
Regards,
TimSC
_______________________________________________
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
