…drone aircraft are coming to help plant trees in 83,000 hectares devastated by the White Rock Lake Wildfire in 2021. This week, Flash Forest, an Ontario-based company co-founded by two Kelowna brothers, is starting to replant some of the burnt forest using drones firing seed pods into the soil from 15 to 40 metres above. …The big advantage to drone planting is not only how fast it can be done – a tree planter using a shovel can do only about 1,500 plantings a day – but also accessibility. “We try not to go into the site,” Cameron Jones, the company’s chief operating officer said. “We don’t want to put our planters at risk because we’re planting in high severity burns. It’s very dangerous territory. You have a lot of snags.” …The drones range up to two kilometres from their base and crews can position themselves in safe areas to replace batteries and reload with them with up to 8,000 seed pods for each drone.