Every year, millions of acres of land are lost to wildfires, wiping out entire ecological systems, capable of isolating entire areas from the surrounding biosytems - fields unable to seed trees, limiting vegetation and discouraging animals and other creatures from reinhabiting (and reinvigorating) an affected area.
Since 2019, DroneSeed has been trying to help with this problem, utilizing drones to disperse seeds on fire-affected areas in Washington, Oregon, California, and Montana. The first company approved by the FAA to use heavy lift drones, DroneSeed’s customers include timber companies, tribal nations, and non-profits around the Northwest, often for their unique, technology-enriched approach, using 8-foot drones capable of seeding 1/4th of a football field with one payload.
In 2021, the company purchased a private seed supplier to offset a shortage in seeds - and is now using drones and cameras to identify pine cones, to enrich their supply of seeds, which grows more important as wildfire seasons continue to get longer and larger. Though they’ll never be able to keep up with the amount of burned acres around the world at any given time, DroneSeed’s embrace of technology has brought some much-needed hope to the reforestation efforts being taken up around the world.
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