A helicopter-mounted device could soon be replanting damaged forests (Image: Mauri Rautkari/Rex)

FORESTS devastated by fire or illegal logging could soon be replanted from the air, if tests of a technology being developed in the UK prove successful.

C-Questor of Weybridge, Surrey, has developed a technique to drop and plant hundreds of tree seedlings from a helicopter, greatly increasing the speed with which forests can be replanted, and reducing costs. Jeff Burley of C-Questor, and former head of the Oxford Forestry Institute at the University of Oxford, says 75 per cent of seeds scattered from the air are wasted – …