Every year deforestation leads to the clearing of 13 billion trees around the world, considerably slowing down our efforts in the fight against climate change. In a bid to put a dent in the deforestation rates across the globe, a Canadian tech company is aiming to plant 1 billion trees by 2028 – with the help of drones.
Toronto-based startup Flash Forest is using a fleet of aerial drones which has been designed to plant trees ten times faster than human planters. Since they began testing their prototype drones earlier this year, they have already managed to plant several thousand trees across Ontario.
Using pre-germinated seed pods, the drones are capable of planting trees at just 50 cents per sapling—which is just one-fourth the cost of typical planting methods.
Flash Forest hopes to diversify its ecosystems by using eight different species of trees. The organization has already managed to hit its first crowdfunding goal of $10,000 within 24 hours of launching their Kickstarter campaign.
The group now plans to start planting trees in April with at least 150,000 trees in the ground by the end of 2020.
