The researchers identified 10 drone companies for planting trees, as well as university research in India and government afforestation efforts in New Zealand and Madagascar. In Myanmar, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, drones have been used to support the planting of mangrove trees, which is a potentially influential development, as trees planted near the equator capture more carbon than those planted elsewhere.
But researchers said few companies have shared a success or study on how seeds cope after being removed by a drone. They called on participants in sowing drones to be more open about their results. They call the promises to grow a billion trees a year “propaganda.”
Mikey Mohan is a PhD student at UC Berkeley and lead author of the article. He believes that commitments to grow a billion trees are largely promotional tactics for companies that want to raise funds from investors. He said half of the social media posts he had seen relating to drones planting trees were related to promises to plant a billion trees.
What actually matters is the number of seeds that grow in trees in two or three years, he said, not the number of seeds you can drop on the ground in one day.
Researchers cite a 2020 study by DroneSeed that found that the survival rates of some conifer seeds varied between zero and 20 percent, similar to previous efforts to dump seeds from planes or helicopters in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. years. Like other companies in the field, DroneSeed declined to say how many trees it has planted so far. The company will not disclose customer names, but says it works with three of the five largest logging companies in the United States, as well as non-profit organizations such as Nature Conservancy.
Last month, the five-year-old DroneSeed acquired SilvaSeed, a 130-year-old company that is one of the largest private suppliers of forest seeds on the west coast of the United States. In context, SilvaSeed grows more seedlings per year than the Cal Fire Afforestation Center. The acquisition is due to the fact that DroneSeed CEO Grant Canary told WIRED due to the fact that the climate action reserve, which tracks the environmental benefits of emission reduction projects, now includes the benefits of afforestation.
“What we see in afforestation and carbon credits, we can now take the burned land and make sure there is a source of capital to afforest it,” Kanarski said.
In an attempt to make drone seeds more viable, companies are applying machine learning and imaging technology to select optimal tree planting locations and guide drone flight paths. They contain seeds in pellets made from ingredients such as clay and soil and are sometimes shot into the ground. Each seed capsule is designed to contain the moisture and nutrients that the seed needs to begin.
DroneSeed, for example, includes hot pepper to deter squirrels or other wildlife from eating its hockey-sized dishes. How these seed cases are made varies. Some contain a single seed, but Dendra Systems says it can pack up to 50 types of seeds for trees, shrubs and native grass in one capsule.
Asked to comment on the allegations of propaganda, Flash Forest CEO Bryce Jones said the company still plans to plant 1 billion trees by 2028.
Dendra Systems, formerly known as Biocarbon Engineering, is one of the oldest and most well-known companies using drones to plant trees. CEO Susan Graham said the company was founded with the belief that the main reason humanity is still slowing the decline in tree populations is that we are not using enough technology.
“You can tackle the biodiversity challenge, you can tackle the livelihood challenge, and you can tackle the carbon challenge all in one, if you can do it on a scale,” she said.
She declined to say how many trees the company had planted. According to her, environmentalists check the results, and the results of their work are shared privately with customers. She says Dendra is now focusing more on the total area it can restore than on the number of trees planted.
Former Dendra CEO Lauren Fletcher says he came up with the idea of using drones to plant trees in 2008 and was one of the first CEOs to promise billions of trees. He does not think that any drone planting company has yet achieved this goal, but he believes that it remains useful as an example of the great thinking needed to tackle the global problems of ecosystem restoration.
“It’s a fact that people understand trees. “They can see them, touch them, feel them, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to sell,” he said. “Try to sell soil microbes.”
Fletcher is currently working with Dendra Systems co-founder Irina Fedorenko on another company that aims to plant trees with small drones, especially for small landowners. Through a partnership with WeRobotics, Flying Forests wants to plant trees with drones in 30 countries. He is researching projects in Kenya, Panama and Uganda.