Britain has a long history of deforestation and almost ran out of timber during World War I. A commission was established to make the country more self-reliant after the war, but this still led to a decline in native woods. The Scottish Highlands are a good example as more than 90% of the trees are gone. Many lands were never replanted and today still lay barren. Now they may be reforested by war planes.

Forests are to be created by dropping millions of trees out of aircraft. Equipment installed in the huge C-130 transport aircraft used by the military for laying carpets of landmines across combat zones has been adapted to deposit the trees in remote areas including parts of Scotland.

Flying 1,000 feet above the ground at 130 knots allows 3,000 cones to be planted in one minute. Interesting to read a real-world version of swords-to-plowshares.

Update 2019:

1) The fashion brand Timberland has announced “we’ve made a bold commitment to plant 50 million trees around the world over the next 5 years”.

2) A Seattle startup has announced its drones now can plant 100 trees/hour

These drones scout a burned area, mapping it down to as high as centimeter accuracy, including objects and plant species, fumigate it efficiently and autonomously, identify where trees would grow best, then deploy painstakingly designed seed-nutrient packages to those locations. It’s cheaper than people, less wasteful and dangerous than helicopters and smart enough to scale to national forests currently at risk of permanent damage.