So drones, automation and scaling are cool and all, but on a serious note first, protecting biodiverse old-growth forests is much easier — and just as important — as planting new ones. Cool Earth is a non-profit that works alongside rainforest communities to stop deforestation, and you can donate to them now.

That out of the way, here are three startups trying to solve our massive deforestation problem.

The opportunity to use drones sounds pretty obvious. But actually just loading up a drone with seeds and firing them randomly into (poor or degraded) soil means a high rate of failure. These three startups are each using highly sophisticated methods to give seeds the maximum chance of survival.

Droneseed

According to TechCrunch, the US alone loses 7 million acres of trees a year, with much of that attributable to wildfires.

Droneseed’s drones scout a burned area, fumigate it, identify where trees would grow best, then deploy seed-nutrient packages. They then spray fertilizer and herbicides to keep the trees healthy.

For in-depth details I recommend this excellent article on TechCrunch: That night, a forest flew, or check out the website below:

Land Life Company

Land Life Company is, in their own words, “on a mission to reforest the world’s 2 billion hectares of degraded land.” I believe that is in the business what you call a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal).

Land Life’s secret sauce is a patented technology called the Cocoon. From the Fast Company article:

In arid areas, the survival rate for Cocoon-planted seedlings ranges from 80% and 95%, which is better than the 10% rate typical for manually planted seedlings. And while it’s about $10 more expensive per tree planted to use the Cocoon, the water savings justify the additional up-front cost.

Land Life uses technologies like drone and satellite imagery to analyze the land before planting and the Cocoon and automated planting systems.

BioCarbon Engineering

Founded by former NASA engineer Lauren Fletcher, the Oxford, U.K.-based company uses drones to fire biodegradable seed pods into the ground, “making planting 150 times faster than traditional methods.” It seeks to scale up reforestation by planting 500 billion trees by 2050 — and sees an estimated $30 million in profit by 2020.

In Myanmar, the startup can plant up to 100,000 trees in a single day. This means the previously back-breaking work of planting trees no longer needs to be done by local people, leaving them to focus on taking care of the young trees.

For more details check out this article in Fast Company: These Tree-Planting Drones Are About To Start An Entire Forest From The Sky,

Automating and scaling tree planting

Given that deforestation currently far outweighs reforestation, I was actually a bit disappointed at how many tech startups appear to be taking reforestation seriously. In fact, it was quite depressing to read in the TechCrunch article above:

It may not surprise you to hear that investors are not especially hot on forest restoration (I joked that it was a “growth industry” but really because of the reasons above it’s in dire straits).

Having said that, these three startups are certainly doing some interesting things, and the potential to scale further gives some hope. It would be amazing to crowd fund new carbon-sucking forests using this kind of technology — maybe in collaboration with One Tree Planted or a similar kind of non-profit.