Forests once sent their seeds fluttering through the air … but not like this. When the six rotors of these heavy-lift drones hum to life, they each propel over 1,500 seeds into an automated swarm that some hope marks the start of a revolution in tree planting. “Reforestation is arguably the best solution we have for pulling carbon out of the air,” said Bryce Jones, co-founder and CEO of Flash Forest, a Canadian drone tree-planting company with a growing footprint in British Columbia. “But there’s no technology. It’s literally people with bags and shovels. It’s been the same method for 100 years.” …Many drone-planting companies are only just emerging from a period of research and experimentation. …UBC researcher, Dr. John Innes says companies like Flash Forest and DroneSeed still need to demonstrate that seeds can achieve high enough success rates to make them a viable supplement to tree planting by hand.