Mumbai has begun counting every tree within its boundaries for the first time in eight years, a citywide digital census that will log the species, health and precise location of close to three million trees as India’s financial capital fights shrinking canopy and intensifying urban heat. That is according to Jitendra Pardeshi, superintendent of gardens at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, who confirmed contractors would survey every tree on civic land across the city’s 24 wards with the help of outside experts and modern mapping technology.
The census is estimated to cost more than 50 million rupees and is expected to run for about 18 months, ranking among the most detailed ecological audits the city has attempted. Mumbai last counted its trees in 2018, an exercise that recorded 2,975,283 trees on municipal land, while omitting the dense canopy of Sanjay Gandhi National Park.
Officials have linked the long gap to the COVID-19 pandemic, which stalled a survey normally repeated every five years, whilst the corporation has drawn sustained criticism for never publishing the full 2018 dataset. The renewed count comes as Mumbai records severe urban heat island conditions across several neighbourhoods, with planners warning that dense construction and shrinking open space are trapping heat at street level.
Surveyors will rely on ground-penetrating radar to scan beneath each tree, which a senior officer in the BMC garden department described as a scientific study capable of “revealing the tree’s health” through three-dimensional images of the root system. Wood Central understands the technology was added partly in response to extensive concreting around tree bases, which has damaged roots and contributed to more tree collapses each monsoon.
Unlike earlier counts built mainly around numbers, the census will record canopy spread, height, age, species, health, and geo-tagged coordinates for every tree, assembling a database to support future planning decisions. The corporation has signalled that the records will be made available on a public platform, allowing residents to check the trees registered in their own ward.
The scale of Mumbai’s green divide is already visible in the last count, which found close to 292,000 trees in the eastern suburb of Ghatkopar against just 5,756 in the Marine Lines and Zaveri Bazaar precinct. Urban ecologists have long argued that the lack of current, ward-level data has weakened the city’s ability to measure canopy loss from roads, coastal works, and utility corridors.
The count runs alongside annual pre-monsoon works, with the corporation marking more than 45,000 trees for pruning before the heavy rain sets in. Thousands of trees have been cleared across Mumbai over the past decade for transport corridors and redevelopment, even as the corporation maintains that three trees are now planted for every one felled.
Whether the database changes how Mumbai weighs its canopy will depend on the corporation feeding the data into infrastructure approvals and land-use decisions, rather than treating the census as a one-off audit. Climate researchers say a dependable ward-level map of where the canopy thins could anchor the city’s heat mitigation and carbon planning for the next decade.
