Climate change is a huge problem that the world is currently facing. But did you know that by simply planting trees, we can make a difference?  Trees help to reduce pollution.  They can also improve the quality of the air, reduce erosion and provide shelter for animals. As it turns out, “ecosystem restoration” is now a big business opportunity.

Recently, a report from the World Resource Institute stated that governments around the world are trying to revive over 400 million acres of wilderness. This is an area that is larger than South Africa alone.  Due to the governments drive to restore the ecosystem, businesses are developing new processes to make tree planting faster, easier and more affordable.

Dr. Lauren Fletcher, a veteran of NASA, is using drones as eco-warriors. He is concerned about climate change and how it has gotten even worse as a result of deforestation.  He created a company called BioCarbon Engineering. The company focuses on ecosystem restoration. He and his colleagues developed a drone they nicknamed ‘Robin’ to handle the problem. The drone flies over land and plants trees!

Robin can plant 120 trees per minute, much more than any human can. Because forests are being chopped down at fast rates, the solution is to plant trees faster.  The standard way of planting trees is by hand. People with bags of seeds over their shoulders go into the field to plant seeds one by one. This process is slow and tedious.

Fletcher’s new drone technology can do it better. His team of experts have backgrounds in engineering, biology, ecology and remote sensing. They started by choosing the right species of trees and then they built a planting drone that flies 10 feet off the ground gently fires seedpods into the ground.  The drone can plant two seeds per second – faster than any person. Fletcher plans to plant about 500 billion trees before the year 2050!

To achieve his goal, he will need a fleet of Robins. He stated that his drones cannot totally eradicate hand planting because there are times when planting by hand is absolutely necessary. The company plans to combine the use of airborne and ground-based equipment in the planting process.  BioCarbon Engineering is not the only company that is using drones in ecosystem restoration. DroneSeed is another company based in Seattle that is also developing drone systems that will help  plant trees. Currently, the company uses drones to spread fertilizer and spray herbicides, but we can expect to see more agriculture drones come to market in the upcoming years.

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