Canadian startup aims to use drone technology for reforestation at an unprecedented rate

Flash Forest, a Canadian startup venture, has developed drone technology that could plant 40,000 trees in a single month, and aims to plant a billion trees within the year.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is necessary to plant at least 1 billion hectares of trees, which is roughly equivalent to the size of the United States, to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius; with Flash Forest aiming to put their drone technology to help reach these ambitious goals.

This drone technology has proven to have been effective at quickly and cheaply restoring forests which have been lost, rather than resorting to a more conventional method of using a large labour force armed with ploughs, shovels and manual methods to do the same task.

Flash Forest's current technology can currently plant between 10,000 to 20,000 seed pods in a single day, with their rapidly expanding technological capabilities being able to allow them to plant 100,000 saplings in a day, at a cost of 50 cents per tree; significantly most cost effective than any manually intensive restoration efforts.