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Indian Scientists Are Experimenting With Drone Seed-bombing To Plant a Forest (factordaily.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: "I'm basically from that area (Gauribidanur in Indian state of Karnataka); son of a farmer, came to academia... keen to bring back my younger days, when the river used to flow for three to four months a year. I need to rejuvenate it," says professor KPJ Reddy over a phone conversation. It's quite apparent from his tone that this experiment means a lot to him. A day earlier, on June 5, World Environment Day, Reddy, in collaboration with two other scientists at the Department of Aerodynamics, Bangalore, Dr H N Science Centre, and the Department of Forest, collectively held their first ever drone-seeding trial on the banks of river Pinakini in the Gauribidanur area in Karnataka's Kolar district. "For that, the only way is to reach by air. Doing it with big aircraft is expensive, and take-offs and landings are a problem. So the only way to do it is through drones," he says, when we meet a few days later at the IISc Campus in Bangalore. Over tea with professor S N Omkar, chief research scientist at IISc, he further elaborates on their plans. "What we have in mind is to at least seed 10,000 acres, and we will be doing this every year, for three consecutive years," he says.
If you don't know what destroyed the old forests, you'll not have much luck creating new ones. Goats in the area? Fageddaboudit. Villagers chopping down everything to feed animals, cook food, warm huts, make charcoal? That's what makes it impossible to regrow forests in places like Haiti: the people cut them down faster than anyone can grow them.
I am not sure it matters. Forests don't disappear because of a "lack of seeds", so just spraying seeds won't bring them back. What happened to the original forest?
Here in California, our live oak forests are slowly disappearing. It is not due to a lack of seeds, but a lack of wolves. The wolves were exterminated more than a century ago. Since then, the deer population has exploded, and they devour the oak seedlings, but don't eat the foul tasting invasive eucalyptus seedlings. In the presence of wolves, there are not only fewer deer, but they also stay on the high ground, and avoid streambeds where they can be cornered, thus allowing the oaks to flourish there.
We have big gnarly oaks that are hundreds of years old, a few tiny seedlings that will soon be eaten ... and nothing in between.
So either expand bag limits and/or the dates of deer hunting season. From a quick google search, it appears hunters are only allowed 2 deer per season, only one of which can be a buck. So at best a hunter can only take 1 breeding pair per year. Allow more bucks to be taken and you will probably see a lot more hunters going out-because who doesn't like a good trophy-and will probably make a bigger dent in the population, since fewer males=less breeding. Or just allow more depredation hunts, or sanction some culls confined to specific areas and closely monitored by game warders.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
White tailed deer are a plague species that spreads wherever man allows them. They replace native species in many areas. What is even more of a problem is that large deep populations are seen by many as evidence that nature is thriving. And a significant number of the people who actually get out into the woods are white tailed deer fans because they enjoy recreationally hunting them.