Drones used to sow tree seeds in scheme to restore lost South West rainforests
14 March 2025, 11:54
The scheme is part of efforts to triple Atlantic temperate rainforest in Devon and Cornwall by mid century.
Tens of thousands of native tree seeds have been sown by drone as part of efforts to triple the amount of rare rainforest in south-west England.
The Woodland Trust has led the project to sow 75,000 seeds of trees native to Atlantic temperate rainforest, including pedunculate oak, alder, wild cherry, downy birch and hazel, on the hills around Bodmin, Cornwall.
The scheme uses the high-tech drones, which are able to carry 58kg (128lbs) of seeds and hover just a few metres above the ground, to reach places that are inaccessible or difficult to plant by humans.
Atlantic temperate rainforest is one of the UK’s precious habitats.
Native trees festooned in lichen, mosses and ferns provide habitat for a wide array of creatures, including hazel dormice, rare blue ground beetles and other insects, and birds such as redstart and pied flycatcher.
These rainforests once swathed western coasts of Britain, the island of Ireland and the Isle of Man, but have shrunk from about a fifth of land to just 1%, cut down for timber and to make space for agriculture.
They now are found only in fragments that face threats including climate change and invasive species.
The Woodland Trust said the seeding scheme has included developing “control areas” across sites to see what the difference would be in using drones versus natural regeneration of temperate rainforest, and they plan to revisit the sites over the next three years.
The seeds were mixed with wood pellets and sawdust when sown, to give an even spread, but the trust said the technology is advancing so that will not be required in future trials.
It is hoped the approach will achieve a 25% success rate in the number of seeds becoming trees, inspiring investment into refining the effectiveness of drones and the supply of native tree seeds.
The scheme, which had the agreement of multiple landowners, is part of efforts by the newly-formed South West Rainforest Alliance group of partners to triple the amount of temperate rainforest in Devon and Cornwall from 8% today to 24% by 2050.
Sam Manning, who is leading the project for the Woodland Trust, said: “Restoring and expanding our temperate rainforests are vital in solving the climate and biodiversity crises.
“A key part of that is developing new innovative methods of woodland creation which are faster, cheaper and reach currently inaccessible sites which are unsafe for human tree planters, or where the soils are too thin for planting with spades.”
He said drones were potentially much faster and cheaper at dispersing seeds than volunteers, and the technology seeds 11 hectares of land in eight hours.
And he added: “Many potential woodland creation sites are either too steep, unsafe or remote for people to plant or scatter seeds.
“Drones can help solve these issues by removing the safety and accessibility limitations of humans.”
Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, author of a new book on rainforests, Our Oaken Bones, owns some of the land where the seeding has taken place.
He said: “Up to a fifth of the British Isles was once a rainforest landscape but this has been reduced to less than 1% of its original range due to deforestation across the uplands.
“If we’re to reverse this destruction then we will need to leverage innovative technology-enabled solutions wherever possible.”
He said he could not think of a “better example” of using technology than the drone-seeding project by the Woodland Trust.
