DRONE REGENERATION?
03 Oct 2017
Is it possible to plant an entire forest with drones? A group of villagers in Myanmar, backed by an Irish start-up, are attempting just that! They aim to plant 250 hectares with 1 million new mangrove trees to help regenerate the area.
Many of us think of drones in terms of personal use, most of us picture the selfie-taking, novelty video-making robots buzzing around tourist spots. But for one group of villagers in Myanmar, drones are providing a much more important service: an Irish startup is using them to help residents replant an entire forest from the sky.
Restoring a damaged ecosystem is time-consuming and difficult work that can take years to complete. Villagers in the Irrawaddy River delta have been hand-planting 2.7 million mangrove trees in order to restore the local forests, but they started looking for an easier way to get the job done. They found the solution with BioCarbon Engineering, which uses drones to plant as many as 100,000 trees in a single day. 
In order to plant that many trees, the drones take a systematic approach, flying over the land to map the topography and choose the best location for planting. A second wave of drones then fly over the area and fire seed pods into the ground in accordance with calculations made by previous drones.
The drone-planting project began in September 2017, covering about 250 hectares with 1 million new trees, in addition to the 750 hectares that the villagers have already planted. If all goes according to plan, eventually BioCarbon Engineering will help plant up to 1 billion trees in the area. 
The startup is working along with Worldview International Foundation, a nonprofit that manages tree-planting projects. In Myanmar, mangrove trees are particularly important because they help provide an ecosystem for fish to live in, and they protect coastlines from storms. Restoring the trees will go a long way toward protecting vulnerable people living in the coastal areas.
