[Talk-GB] Kent Heritage Trees Project - launch event report

[TimSC]

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