Drone seeding and E-seeds sound exciting, but ecosystem restoration needs practical solutions
Retrieved on:
Monday, May 1, 2023
It gently lands on the bare ground and sits there, exposed to the elements, until it rains.
Key Points:
- It gently lands on the bare ground and sits there, exposed to the elements, until it rains.
- But, from a restoration practitioner’s point of view, it has logistical issues that can greatly limit its application at scale.
Unproven ‘game-changers’
- Numerous private companies have entered the market with revolutionary devices (mostly drones), claiming to restore ecosystems by planting billions of trees.
- This fascination with shiny technological gadgets might divert scarce resources from practical, on-the-ground solutions that will seriously affect our ability to restore degraded ecosystems globally.
- For decades, scientists and practitioners have been working on solutions to support and accelerate the recovery of degraded ecosystems.
Most seeds fail
- For a start, seeds need to reach the right place in the soil to germinate and grow.
- If seeds are scattered (seed broadcasting) on the soil surface by hand, tractor or drone, they can be blown off by the wind or eaten by animals.
- As a result, most seeds will not become a plant.
- This stopped the seed from clumping but greatly reduced the number of seeds that could be delivered on each drone flight.
- This clumping seeds issue is also common when dealing with native species, such as the grasses that inspired the design of the E-seed.
Effective, not flamboyant
- Therefore, we must approach ecosystem restoration holistically and not get carried away by the lure of shiny technologies.
- Funders with limited appreciation of restoration’s ecological and practical complexities are keen to embrace and invest in charismatic, yet often unproven technologies.
- We should focus on the most effective ways to restore native ecosystems, not the most flamboyant.