Is this actually that big of a deal? Unless they're literally carpet-bombing the place I'd expect the collateral damage to be minimal.

I guess you can also adjust the schedule of the operation at times where the most common animals in the target area aren't active and are unlikely to be out in the line of fire.

Air-dropping pinecones and seeds, however, might be sufficient (and very fast). Cones and seeds are already designed to fall at/near terminal velocity and later on yield a tree.

It'd definitely make me smile to see a Hercules flying across recently-logged terrain or historically-deforested offloading tons of seeds that drift to the ground to start a new life.

I doubt human casualties or even injuries are acceptable.

A potential solution would be to announce the operation months/years in advance and actively prohibit access to the areas during that time.

Aerial seeding is an established practice with quite a history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_seeding

https://www.deseret.com/2000/10/28/19536330/forest-service-i...

To quote: "Using a helicopter to broadcast native plant seeds, conservation officials of Wasatch-Cache National Forest have begun to rehabilitate parts of the Stansbury Mountains burned in last summer's wildfires."

This is an article from 2000.

It is very widely used to re-seed remote locations which would be hard or hazardous to approach on foot.

How do seeds arrive on the ground from trees, naturally?

Anyway, there's a lot of them. At first I was hand pulling them, but after I identified them I realized I could probably just mow them and, once they've had their sprouting leaves chopped off, they'll just starve.

But the relevant point of my story is that I learned that: a) apparently (some) trees really do just disperse ridiculous amounts of seedlings, many of which do germinate and at least begin to grow. b) since I've never seen Maple trees growing in dense thickets like bamboo, I'm assuming that the vast majority of seedlings die off (and in fact a lot of the seedlings are sprouting in clearly terrible conditions that won't make sense once they're just a tiny bit larger -- in shallow soil, in deep shade, etc).

I'm a bit less skeptical that drone-based seeding would work thanks to this, though have no opinion on if that's an improvement over humans doing the seeding in terms of success and efficiency.

These trees are valued for furniture in Asia, but are invasive pests elsewhere, yet are still promoted by plant nurseries.

Many species of both animals & plants use the "spray and pray" mechanism of reproduction. Create enough gametes and by sheer numbers, some of them will eventually turn into adults.

That doesn't mean this approach will be successful for artificial reforestation. The numbers are fairly different for ensuring that the total number of seeds cast off by a maple or pine tree over its lifetime results in one successor tree, vs. trying to recreate a clear-cut forest from seed stocks delivered by drone.

Wot? have you not seen a Sycamore?

https://blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org/allin/2017/11/12/f...

That is traditionally how seeds spread...

Basically all tree seeds are spread by air, except perhaps ones that travel though an animal and get "planted" in droppings. Trees don't usually have seed drills.

To be fair, the germination rate of the average tree seed is probably in the millionths, which is why they make so many.

Those numbers would be very small. The percentage of the area of a forest that has the body of an animal directly above it is quite low.

"These pods are manufactured using waste biomass, providing a carbon rich coating that protects the seeds from birds, insects and rodents."