THE use of drones to sow tree seeds could ‘revolutionise’ the expansion of rainforests across the South West, a charity has said.

The Woodland Trust says that its use of the hi-tech drones allowed them to scatter more than 70,000 seeds, reaching areas it says would simply be inaccessible for humans to reach.

Working with the South West Rainforest Alliance, the Woodland Trust hopes the new seeding technique will help triple the area of Temperate Rainforest in Devon and Cornwall by 2050, from eight percent to 24 percent of land area.

Sam Manning, Project Officer for south-west rainforests at the Woodland Trust said: ‘Rainforest once covered 75% of Devon and Cornwall but we have lost 90% of it.

‘These are among the most threatened ecosystems on earth.

‘They are biodiversity hotspot, home to over 2000 species of lichen. Sadly, rainforests cover just 1% of the Earth’s land surface, and we are one of only a small handful of rainforest nations left on Earth.

‘Restoring and expanding our temperate rainforests are vital to solving the climate and biodiversity crises.

‘A key part of that is developing innovative methods of woodland creation which are faster, cheaper and reach inaccessible sites, unsafe for human tree planters, or places where soils are too thin for planting with spades.

‘Drones are potentially much faster and cheaper at dispersing seeds than volunteers.

‘The other aspect is safety and accessibility.

‘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.’

The drones, which seeded 11 hectares of land in eight hours, scattered tree seeds that are native to rainforests, including pedunculate oak, alder, wild cherry, downy birch and hazel on hills near Bodmin.