In The Jungle The Drone Plants Trees Tonight?

Technology and the Environment, two causes which some people believe are at heads with each other. Conflicting and clashing at every possible opportunity, do we develop more power and change the planet to improve life for humans and the technology we can use, or do we reduce the changes we make to the world in an attempt to repair the damage our race has made to the planet. Sometimes, on a rare occasion, the two causes go hand in hand to create something beautiful.

BioCarbon Engineering, a company led by Lauren Fletcher, a former NASA Engineer, is a company that believes that technology and the environment are not always at heads. Their latest initiative hopes to use the former to help save the latter. Drones, tiny devices capable of flight, are being advertised for delivering your latest Amazon packages and help keep your neighbourhood safe, but BioCarbon Engineering wants to use them for something else. To Plant a billion trees a year.

After scanning and mapping the terrain, the drones are expected to carry out precision planting of already germinated seeds so that once planted they can begin growing almost instantly. With a rate of 10 pellets per minute, totaling 36,000 trees a day based on two controllers it could mean thousands of trees planted in a fraction of the time taken to replant by hand, the traditional method is currently employed by reforestation groups. Coating the seeds with hydrogel improves their chances of flourishing, while their work with local groups to the areas, they hope that they can repopulate large areas with a diverse array of trees, creating ecosystems where felled trees and barren lands have started to appear.

David Attenborough once said, “instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment”.

Sometimes the creations we have made, through years of industrial development, can be used to help repair the damage we’ve done. I hope that this scheme is backed and succeeds, to be able to see the forests that once expanded back into the distance reborn anew ready for the next generation is something we can all dream of.

Thank you Springwise for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of BioCarbon Engineering.