‘A living record’: Edmonton student wins $100K scholarship for creating tree tracking website

A Grade 12 student won $100,00 towards his university education thanks to a website he made exploring Alberta's trees. Nahreman Issa reports.

Grade 12 student Josh Kirsch’s love for trees has won him a prestigious scholarship to help pay for university, thanks to a website he created to track heritage trees in Alberta.

The Schulich Leader Scholarship is only given to 100 students to achieve academic success in the STEM field across Canada.

Kirsch created Ancient Roots Alberta, a live platform that tracks and documents heritage trees in the province. His passion for trees began back in the pandemic when he was given a book by his librarian.

“Basically it talked about big trees, old trees, unique trees and this just kind of sparked my interest that there was more out there than just your regular forest, there’s a story behind it,” Kirsch told CTV News Edmonton.

That interest set the roots to create something online with his teacher.

Back in 2022, they launched Alberta Grade 1 Tree Project, a website that tracks the trees Grade 1 students planted as part of their curriculum. Students and the public can see where they are now growing across Alberta.

For Ancient Roots Alberta, Kirsch spent hundreds of hours just to build the platform itself. That doesn’t include all the time spent in the last six years measuring, exploring and documenting heritage trees in the province.

There are currently 374 verified heritage trees and counting on the website.

“It’s definitely a living record, something that I’m going to work on all throughout my life. I don’t ever see it ending or stopping. It’s kind of a growing project that I’m always going to work on,” Kirsch said proudly.

He hopes his website will get people exploring their neighbourhoods to help find new trees to add to his platform.

His love for trees has helped him branch off into a successful career. The scholarship awarded him $100,000.

He was encouraged to apply by his Jasper Place High School guidance councillor Jacqueline Rohac.

“It’s not very often you get a student that has the academic abilities, as well as the passion and the story behind all of that,” Rohac said.

“it was really his passion for his project that stood out.”

Rohac says as guidance counselor, seeing a student succeed is the best part of the job and seeing them follow their dreams.

Kirsch plans to study forest business management at the University of Alberta this fall.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nahreman Issa