An Ottawa student is building a free app to score turtle crossing sites

A grade 12 student in Ottawa is spending after-school hours writing free software for environmental groups that still collect data on paper. CBC News reported on October 20, 2026, that Akshit Erukulla, of Merivale High School, started volunteering with those groups a few years ago and decided his programming could help as much as picking up litter.

For Turtle Guardians, a charity based in Haliburton, Ontario, with chapters across Canada, he is building an app that scores places where a culvert might let turtles cross a road. Founder Leora Berman said a bad site can do harm, so volunteers look for wet ground, nearby crossings, and a line of sight through the pipe, along with who owns the land and how large the wetlands are. They used to fill paper forms and sort them later in the office. Berman said the app, now in beta, should score a site and map it on the spot. She hoped to try it in the field within two or three weeks of the interview. Erukulla told CBC his other projects were at different stages and that he wanted them in beta by the end of October.

No tunnel has been built because of the app. The reported step is a testing version that replaces a clipboard for people who are already out looking.