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Jammu and Kashmir's government began the process of geo-tagging in its bid to preserve heritage Chinar trees in Kashmir on Thursday.
Dr Syed Tariq, Scientist at Forest Research Institute said, "Chinars are oxygen producers. Chinar has its own scope, it plays a major role. Keeping this in view, we thought of keeping a track on the stock of Chinar in the Valley. With the advancement of technologies, we provided 'Digital Aadhaar' to these trees. Now, every Chinar has its own 'Aadhar' number. We have linked it to Digital India. We have installed scanable QR codes. Every district has its own district code with the number of Chinars. So far, we have identified and geo-tagged 28,560 Chinar." He further said that forest areas have come to the rescue of Chinar. "We have collected their readings, physical characteristics and locked them with QR scan. You can scan the QR code and know everything about them. We have also appealed for 'Save Chinar'. This is a very positive step because we will make a data bank of all the Chinars and we will hopefully bring this into the public domain very soon. We expect to be having 30,000-35,000 Chinars in J&K. We are also planting new saplings. We are installing metal plating on 10,000 Chinars as of now," he further said. Mohd. Yaseen Reshi, contractor of the Chinar geo-tagging project said that he good technical support from the division. He said, "This is a very positive project. This Chinar geo-tagging project is being undertaken for the first time in Kashmir. I am delighted to have been a part of this project. I am so thankful to Forest Division which supported me. We will complete this at the earliest. This is a good initiative." (ANI)
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