Empress Garden, Kavade Mala, Ghorpadi, Pune
Biodiversity Surveys
Empress Botanical Garden has a wealth of biodiversity, not just of plants but birds, insects and other life forms too.
Empress Botanical Garden has a wealth of biodiversity, not just of plants but birds, insects and other life forms too. We are trying to document this diversity systematically using surveys conducted on Garden premises in different seasons.
Experts of different taxonomic groups such as botanists, ornithologists, herpetologists, and mycologists with the help of citizens, students conduct these surveys to understand how much life this urban green space supports.
Citizens can participate simply by visiting the garden, clicking photos of various fascinating creatures or trees they find here and uploading the photos on a platform called iNaturalist (www.inaturalist.org).
While uploading their photos in their iNaturalist account they need to select geographical location as Empress Botanical Garden and their photos can become part of our biodiversity documentation project!
Even if citizens do not know names/ identities of what they photographed, experts and suggestions on iNaturalist platform can help them identify it.
We conducted a preliminary insect diversity survey and documented some wonderful bugs around the campus. You can see some of them here Or by visiting the garden in-person.
We are currently conducting bird survey in the garden and have documented at least 40 species of common and not-so-common birds! See our photo gallery here. To see some of the feathered wonders we caught on camera in the garden.