Drones used to sow seeds to restore rainforests

A project which uses drones to disperse tree seeds could "revolutionise" the expansion of rainforests in the South West, the Woodland Trust has said.

The charity said 75,000 seeds had been scattered on hills which would be inaccessible for human planting by hand.

The drones, which seeded 11 hectares of land around Bodmin in eight hours, scattered tree seeds native to rainforests, including pedunculate oak, alder, wild cherry, downy birch and hazel.

Project officer Sam Manning said a key part of restoring temperate rainforests was "developing innovative methods of woodland creation".

He said: "Drones are potentially much faster and cheaper at dispersing seeds than volunteers.

"The other aspect is safety and accessibility, many potential woodland creation sites are either too steep, unsafe or remote for people to plant or scatter seeds.

"Drones can help solve these issues by removing the safety and accessibility limitations of humans."

The drones hover a few metres above the ground and are able to carry 58kg of seeds, the Wildlife Trust said.

It said it hoped the new seeding technique would help triple the area of temperate rainforest in Devon and Cornwall by 2050, from 8% to 24% of land area.

The Woodland Trust said it aimed to return to all the trial sites over the next three years to assess the success rate of germination and later, how the planted trees are developing.

Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, who owns some of the land where the seeding has taken place, said the habitats were "a pinnacle ecosystem in the UK".

He said: "Up to a fifth of the British Isles was once a rainforest landscape but this has been reduced to less than 1% of its original range due to deforestation across the uplands.

"If we're to reverse this destruction then we will need to leverage innovative technology-enabled solutions wherever possible.

"I cannot think of a better example of this than the drone seeding project that the Woodland Trust have embarked on in the Cabilla Valley."

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