Squiirrel App Collects Native Seeds and Supports Reforestation Using AWS Services

During the pandemic, Blaine Pearson, CEO and co-founder of Wilder Climate Solutions, became a seed collector. As she ventured into the forests near Toronto she learned to gather seed from a variety of locally adapted native trees and shrubs. With a freezer full of acorns and a continually growing collection, she began connecting with nurseries that might have demand for the seed.

After working on a national survey and report about the native seed supply in Canada, Pearson realized there were a number of major gaps hindering the market. At the beginning of the supply chain there is a lack of trained people doing the work of growing and collecting seeds. There is also a gap around market matching to bring together nurseries and collectors. Finally, collecting seeds is a rare skill. It tends to be learned over years of trial and error, with collectors using paper or rudimentary spreadsheets to catalog their collections—or nothing at all. The absence of verified and secure data leaves room for error and inhibits visibility that would help improve decision-making.

“Most seed collectors are still using analog forms of data capture, like pens and paper,” Pearson said. “That’s worked for a long time, but it leaves a lot on the table in terms of data visibility and traceability, which can enable better decision-making down the line. We wanted to be able to use technology to onboard a new generation of collectors, improve the data they collect, expedite the movement of demand signals through the supply chain, and enhance how data is connected to a seed as it moves through the system.”

After searching for a technology services company that shared their curiosity for the seed-to-tree supply chain, the team at Wilder Climate Solutions found Accenture. Together, the two organizations envisioned an app that would accomplish three goals: connect collectors and growers, digitize the process of seed collecting, and train novice seed collectors on best practices.

To turn this vision into the Squiirrel app, Accenture turned to AWS. For several years, Accenture and AWS have worked on sustainability projects that help communities improve climate and biodiversity resilience.

“Accenture has a history of developing nature-based solutions on AWS, so we knew AWS would provide the best cloud services for us to create Squirrel,” said Julian Caspari, co-lead of the sustainability practice at Accenture.

Squiirrel functions as a nearly infinite seed catalog for collectors to track the origin and viability of specimens they find. For new users, the app prompts them to take photos of where they found their seeds, as well as the seed itself. It also geotags their location and asks a series of questions about how they found the seed—was it on the ground, was the tree where it came from healthy, was it part of a tree stand? For each collection, Squiirrel creates a QR code that serves as a unique tracker for those seeds throughout their entire lifecycle. As the seeds are planted and grow into trees, that QR code will still be able to show where the seeds originated and under what conditions.

All images uploaded into Squiirel are saved in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket and information about each seed is logged in a backend database powered by Amazon DynamoDB. Users can also search Squiirrel for particular seeds and Amazon Rekognition kicks in to analyze saved images and surface relevant photos and results. To build out the frontend of the app, the team at Accenture used AWS Amplify.