Keepers

Keepers invites people to form a living relationship with the trees in their city. By activating urban street trees, citizens help make visible the quiet work trees do every day — cooling streets, cleaning air, storing carbon, supporting life, and building resilience in a changing climate.

How it works

Become a Keeper

How it works

To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key.

The Keeper Loop:

How Action Becomes Stewardship

Participate in Real-World Action

Action creates value.

Keepers earn their first Rings by taking part in tangible activities - things like:

tree walks and mapping
tree planting
community care activities
urban runs
creative arts events
learning sessions and workshops

Participation is lightweight but real. No passive “likes,” no abstract pledges.

The outcome? People associate trees with lived experience, not distant policy or data.

Earn HST Rings

HST Rings accumulate - a tangible way to understand value

Once a Keeper activates a tree, two things start to happen:

daily calculations of ecosystem services begin - CO2 sequestration, pollution removal from the atmosphere, energy savings through cooling - the tree begins to report these metrics to the local host Highly Sensitive Tree.

And, the Keeper's portfolio starts to generate value for them:

HST Rings - digital point tokens - begin to accumulate, one for each unit of ecosystem services produced by the tree.

Current HST Ring amounts appear in their dashboard or in the Keepers app. As trees produce ecosystem services, Keepers earn HST Rings that reflect the real-world benefits those trees provide.

The Outcome? Invisible benefits become visible.

Activate Trees

Stewardship becomes personal.

Once they've accumulated enough Rings, Keepers can use them to "activate" specific trees. That means that they:

browse the HST map and list of trees that are available in their area and decide on the best options for building their portfolios.
consider things like the ecosystem services provided by particular species, their biodiversity values and resilience scores, the size of tree (and thus the expected "production" of ecosystem services they could expect) and location.
select the trees that are going to give them the best "return on investment" and add them to their portfolios

This brings the value of ecosystem services right down to a community level and makes it relevant. If we accumulate HST rings (and can redeem those for real-world perks) then what our trees provide us with starts to really matter!

The Outcome? Emotional connection replaces abstraction.

Track tree performance

The science behind the benefits trees provide becomes important.

There's a lot more to being a Keeper than just "setting and forgetting" (and accumulating HST Rings in while you sleep)!

To really profit from being a Keeper, it takes active participation - learning about trees, tweaking one's portfolio by varying species types, numbers of trees, size of trees etc. It's possible to really generate substantial HST Rings in this game, but it takes some focus and engagement with the trees themselves, to get the mix just right!

Keepers can release trees from their portfolio in exchange for HST Rings, and then reinvest those Rings in other trees, depending on their personal strategy. And, regular webinars in the HST Canopy Community help Keepers to learn just how to hone their skills and perfect their approach.

The Outcome? A far deeper appreciation for trees.

Reinvest or Redeem HST Rins

An ecology based incentive system.

Depending on a Keeper's strategy and mix of trees in their portfolio, they can accumulate substantial HST Rings in their account.

And this is where it gets interesting...

Those Rings can be either:

reinvested in more trees, to increase the Keeper's overall tree portfolio size; or

redeemed for real-world perks from our partners - things like discounts on merchandise, entry tickets to events, free treats or even (for larger redemption values of Rings) VIP experiences.

The Outcome? The message is driven home: if we care for trees, trees make our lives better (and perks are, well, just an added little bonus)!

Trees, Ecosystem Services and Data

Trees as Contributors

Keepers is a community engagement initiative that highlights the fact that urban street trees are living contributors within a shared ecological system.

Keepers helps us understand what trees actually do for us - it helps grasp the science involved but more than that, it helps us place the correct value on trees.

Ecosystem Services

When Keepers activate trees in their city, our tech behind the scenes begins to calculate the ecosystem services they provide — carbon sequestration, cooling and energy savings, air pollution reduction (PM2.5 and PM10), stormwater runoff protection, biodiversity value, oxygen production, and climate resilience.

Data Reporting

Each activated tree also starts to report its data to a local Highly Sensitive Tree (HST), which acts as the host and reference point for the project in that area.

That lets us bring all of that data together in one place. And most importantly, lets us look at that data in a way that makes sense to us all.

Keepers

How it works

Participate in Real-World Action

Trees, Ecosystem Services and Data

Trees as Contributors

Ecosystem Services

Data Reporting

Curious?