Track Your Tree’s Progress: Project Green and Puttinu Cares Plant Geotagged Saplings
Project Green has developed a website through which the public can monitor the progress of newly planted saplings across Malta.
This platform was created following a collaboration between the Puttinu Cares Foundation and Parks Malta – who planted a total of 1,600 trees and shrubs across two localities for this project.
The site allows donors to input their tree’s unique identification number to access a geographical location in precise coordinates, an image of the tree, and the ability to flag damage to plants so that caretaking authorities can take appropriate action.
Parks Malta matched every €300 sum donated to Puttinu Cares by members of the public by planting a tree. Their total investment of €35,000 covered the cost of sourcing and planting trees, along with tagging each plant with a plaque commemorating the life of a Puttinu Cares patient, or with the name of a donor organisation.
Alongside this commemoration, Project Green has now introduced this system which will allow each sapling’s growth to be monitored by benefactors through a geotagging system.
The first tree to have been planted in this initiative was named after Victor Calvagna, a doctor who founded Puttinu Cares and worked alongside patients and their families for much of his career – before being tragically killed from wounds sustained when he was hit by a car whilst jogging in Qawra.
Left: The cluster of plants outside of Mosta, Right: the larger sapling forest, within a stone's throw of Birżebbuġa's Freeport
Geotagged trees are currently clustered in two areas of Malta; 1,494 of them are in a segregated section of the recently reinvigorated Bengħajsa Family Park, while another 126 are just outside Mosta’s city limits.
Those in Bengħajsa have been cordoned off until they can grow and establish themselves – as interference could destabilise or kill them. Until they have outgrown their saplings’ vulnerability, donors are encouraged to track their progress digitally.
If this initiative proves successful over coming months and years, Project Green could seek to expand this geotagged database to include all trees planted under Malta’s greening initiatives, so that two clusters of green can multiply into many more.
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