Digital Aadhaar shields Kashmir’s Chinars from axe of greed SRINAGAR: When the seasons paint Kashmir in myriad hues, the Chinar burns red in autumn and glows green in spring. But even giants fall. Over the years, this legally protected tree has been felled — sometimes by the axe of greed, sometimes on the frail excuse of decay.No more. Now, each Chinar has been given an identity. Through the “Digital Tree Aadhaar” initiative by J&K Forest Research Institute (JKFRI), Chinars have been assigned unique numbers — etched into the digital world with geographic information systems (GIS) and QR codes to enable real-time tracking and monitoring.“It’s like a car plate number,” said forest division officer Syed Tariq Kashani, who carried out the Chinar census over the years. “Through a car number, you identify everything about the car and its owner. In the same way, we have done this for Chinar trees.”Metal cards dangle from their branches like medals of honour, carrying data — location, height, health — etched in codes, scannable at a touch. Their digital footprint ensures that every tree can be tracked, its health examined, its absence accounted for.Urbanisation, climate change, and illegal felling have all taken a toll on these majestic trees that can grow up to 98 feet tall with large maple-like leaves. With the Aadhaar, encroachment, illegal felling, and neglect can no longer go unnoticed.Once, the number of Chinars in Kashmir was lost in uncertainty — rumours placed them anywhere between 4,000 and 40,000. But when Kashani and his team began their work in 2021, the truth emerged from the shadows — 28,560 Chinar trees stood counted across Kashmir, though many more remain hidden behind the high fences of military cantonments, waiting for permission to be recorded.Step by step, year by year, the census grew — 18,000 trees geotagged in 2021-22, another 10,000 in 2023-24. Each tree, measured and recorded, was marked for its longitude, latitude, altitude, health, height, and even “diameter at breast height”.Among them, some stand taller than the rest, carrying centuries in their rings. Budgam district holds some of the oldest Chinars in Asia, their roots digging deep into the valley’s soul. And in Ganderbal, a new legend has emerged — a tree so vast that it overshadows the previously declared largest Chinar in the continent.“The girth of this newly recorded tree is 22m, its height 27m,” said Kashani. “The older record-holder was smaller — 14m in girth and 16m tall.” Yet even this giant bows to a greater one — the world’s largest Chinar, found in Europe’s Georgia, standing at 27m in girth and 30m high.The Chinar, or “Bouin” as it is called in Kashmiri, has been here long before the Mughal emperors, though history credits Akbar with planting an estimated 1,200 Chinars in Naseem Bagh near Dal Lake in Srinagar. Even today, that legacy survives — rows of Chinars still standing.Bijbehara — the “Town of Chinars” — remains a living monument to these giants. Here, the trees gather like sages in silent communion, their gnarled branches stretching skyward, their canopies casting shadows older than the city streets they overlook.But history alone cannot protect the Chinar. The digital Aadhaar ensures these trees are no longer just silent sentinels but monitored beings.
Digital Aadhaar shields Kashmir’s Chinars from axe of greed | India News
