Open call: Test call: pitch Openhands to someone who has never heard of it

Extra eyes for the forest: a pitch to our district forester Who this is for. The district forester at our regional forest service, the person responsible for keeping the spruce forests in our area healthy. What you need done. Find damaged and infected spruces early. Bark beetles breed in spruces that storms or snow have broken, or that drought has weakened. If such a tree is found and taken out quickly, the infection stops there. If it is found late, the beetles fly out and attack the healthy trees around it, and in one summer a single tree can become a whole patch of dead forest. You and your colleagues cannot walk every stand every week. But hundreds of people walk through these forests every week anyway. Who would do the work, and why. Hikers, mushroom pickers, hunters, runners, and people who own a small piece of forest. They are already there. With Openhands they get paid for something that takes two minutes: from the path or forest road, they photograph a spruce that shows the signs. The signs are brown dust like ground coffee at the foot of the trunk, small holes in the bark, drops of resin, needles turning red, or a trunk freshly snapped by wind or snow. They also see on a map that their report got the tree dealt with, so the forest they care about stays healthy. What one report costs. You set the price. For example: 3 euros for each confirmed report of a newly damaged or infected spruce. At the start of the season you set aside money for, say, 200 reports (600 euros). Volunteers can see the money is really there. It is paid out only for reports that pass the check, and whatever is not used stays yours. How a report is checked before anyone is paid. 1. The photo has to be taken on the spot. The phone's location must match the place reported, and the picture must be new, not taken from an old album or the internet. 2. A checker that is neither you nor the volunteer looks at each photo against the signs you listed and decides yes or no. Every decision is kept on a public record anyone can look up. 3. Your rules can say that only the first report of a tree is paid, so a second photo of the same tree earns nothing. A report that fails the check costs you nothing. What changes for you. Instead of finding an outbreak once a hillside has turned brown, you get a map of fresh reports within hours, each with a photo and a location. Your crews go straight to the trees that matter. After a storm you can raise the price for a week and get the whole area looked at quickly. How to try it. Start small: one forest district, one summer, 50 reports at 3 euros, which is 150 euros. You'll know whether it worked by two numbers: how many days pass between a tree being damaged and being removed, and how many new infections start around the trees that were reported.