I fell in love with forests,
oh way, way early in life.
It was my favorite place to just disappear.
One of the most painful things about what we're seeing
with climate change for me personally,
is that we are seeing an unprecedented increase
in wildfires, and for many folks,
that is their homes, their communities,
and that is really hard to bear.
We're losing our forests faster than nature can regenerate.
We're all taught, forest burns, forest regrows.
Well, we're seeing that less and less.
There's a need for scale in reforestation
due to the size and severity of wildfires,
and the need to remove carbon out of the atmosphere.
So we need better tools and technology
to be able to reforest faster.
I'm committed to fighting climate change,
and that's why we found the DroneSeed.
Forests are important for everybody,
no matter where you live.
Forests are the lungs of the earth.
Forests absorb the carbon in the atmosphere.
So carbon sinks, like forests, are incredibly important
in terms of maintaining a climate balance,
but there are millions of acres of land globally
degraded by fire that are now in a condition
in which they are not growing trees.
The huge contributing factor is climate change,
increasing drought, higher temperatures,
changing rainfall patterns.
All of these are setting up the conditions for forest fire.
The word ecopreneur, to me,
means somebody who's focused on
how does my business interface with climate?
And how do we have better business solutions
that interface in a positive way with nature?
DroneSeed's mission is to make reforestation scalable
and mitigate the worst effects of climate change.
Traditional reforestation is hard work.
It is the caloric equivalent of running multiple marathons.
about how we could make reforestation more scalable,
and talked to folks who've been doing the hard work
And one of the things that kept coming up again and again,
Drones have a unique ability to fly
and navigate that terrain much faster,
and so that's where we started.
We like to come in as soon as possible
We want to build an understanding
of what species historically existed here,
what species do we want to put here,
so that they are resilient to the future climate,
We use our seed enablement technology
that we've developed that we call the puck.
So the pucks are a combination of seeds and fertilizer,
and amendments that are specially formulated
to make sure that that puck will be successful
And the best way to do this,
is with our heavy-lift drone swarms.
We fly two to five aircraft at a time.
They take off, they go execute their routes.
They drop the seed vessels that we've manufactured
and they're like a NASCAR pit crew.
We swap out the batteries and the seed vessels
To just continually roll those operations.
Solutions like DroneSeed are needed now more
than ever because our forests are struggling.
[Male voice on radio] Terra seven, clear
[Female voice On Radio] Continuing mission.
One of the number one barriers
to reforestation is seed.
Without seed, you can't have a forest.
And there's a critical seed shortage.
Unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of changes
in mass production on trees right now
that affects the quality of seed.
And that means that we can't get the number of seedlings
that we need to reforest the acres that really need it.
Since the acquisition of Silvaseed in 2021,
we've expanded to become the largest private seed bank
Our goal in being a one-stop shop
for reforestation is to remove the bottlenecks
expand it further, and enable that scale.
There's a marriage that's happening
by bringing together a technology company that's
been innovating like DroneSeed
and 130 year old reforestation business like Silvaseed.
DroneSeed's using all the technology available to it
to innovate on every little nuance of seedling production.
An x-ray machine takes a picture
of the inside of the seed,
and allows us to tell whether there's a viable embryo
inside that will grow to be a seedling.
And our new production machine allows us to
produce an entire tray of seedlings in just 16 seconds.
We have a weather station that allows us to determine
when to water based on the actual vapor pressure deficit
These tools are primarily to improve the quality
of the seedling so that our reforestation efforts
We're putting ourselves in a position to actually get all
of these seedlings from our greenhouses,
get all the seed from our seed banks
out to reforestation sites as fast as possible.
So these tech and data driven solutions are putting us
in a position to make quicker decisions
so that we can address pain points as fast
as possible after a wildfire.
What really breaks my heart about the state
of our current forests is knowing how drought stressed
many of these forested ecosystems are.
The Labor Day fire affected Henry Creek deeply.
It is one of the last remaining stands
of old growth Douglas Fir,
and Oregonians, including me, worked really,
really hard to protect the wilderness.
We lost over 80% of the trees on this property,
and it was a devastating loss.
Land managers who have been affected by fire are looking
When you see your life's work disrupted in a way
that you didn't think was possible,
but really, really difficult in that initial moment
to think, "Oh, how am I going to accomplish a task?
How am I going to reforest this?"
And that's where, whether it's seed seedlings,
drones, or being able to pay for it,
that's where we can plug them in and help them,
while doing reforestation better.
With DroneSeed, we were able to have a plan
of drone application of pucks,
then to have hand planting seedlings the conventional way.
But the other very, very important thing that they did
was they brought some carbon financing to the equation.
Reforestation is really expensive.
It can cost thousands of dollars an acre
to really execute on a reforestation project.
DroneSeed partners with landowners
to develop a carbon offset project to finance
that expensive upfront cost of reforestation.
It feels really good to provide a path forward
to let a landowner know that they aren't alone,
that we're here to help them.
Finding a solution is really what inspires me
to come to work every day and do what I do.
How many trees you do today, Marie?
Mitigating climate change is the business opportunity
of our generation, cuz people don't want polluted air.
People don't want polluted water.
People want their kids to be able to have a bright future.
My hope is that I should be able to walk
among young stands of trees in all of the locations
around the world that we're working on.
I've committed my life to ensuring that we have
a livable planet and that my children and grandchildren
will be able to see the incredible biodiversity
and wonder that this planet has.
Forests are more than trees.
Forests are the clean water, the clean air,
the plethora of animals and plants
that live in these environments.
It's not just the carbon sequestration,
but also the ecosystem services
that they provide our communities and our earth.
What really gives me hope is that DroneSeed is helping
these forest recover to the glory that they had once.
Mitigating the worst effects of climate change is really
what I set out to be my mission,
It doesn't matter what you do.
Doesn't matter if you're an accountant.
Doesn't matter if you're an engineer.
Everyone can do something to take on climate change.
