Don’t let the rain get you down. Use the latest Forest Digest to perk right back up!

  • How do you plant 1 billion trees a year? With drones, of course — treehugger
    BioCarbon Engineering, a UK company, has come up with a tech-savvy way of combating deforestation. The company uses drones to first map potential restoration sites, and then to plant pregerminated seeds enclosed in a nutrient-rich gel in the designated areas for high establishment rates.
  • Head of London-listed company linked to illegal clearing of Peru rainforest — the guardian
    United Cacao, a company committed to providing ‘ethically-produced’ chocolate, is now under fire after the Environmental Investigation Agency released a report claiming they had illegally deforested more than 17,300 acres of the Peruvian rainforest. The company denies the claims, but satellite images provided by the Carnegie Institute for Science say otherwise.
: Red Oaks have invaded the Mark Twain National Forest and while the Forest Service wants to restore the forest back to the natural landscape, others wish to have the current forest preserved. Photo credit: Bhanu Tadinada/ Flickr
Red Oaks have invaded the Mark Twain National Forest and while the Forest Service wants to restore the forest back to the natural landscape, others wish to have the current forest preserved. Photo credit: Bhanu Tadinada/ Flickr
  • Residents Fight Mark Twain National Forest Restoration Plan — NPR
    Butler Hollow in the Mark Twain National Forest has been altered in the past century by human activities, which has allowed many invasive species to take over. As a result, the Forest Service plans to use fire, herbicides and logging to restore one-third of the 1.5 million-acre forest, yet some nearby residents believe the plan is an excuse to log the forest for profit.
  • Losing the forest in Papua New Guinea — The Washington Post
    Like most developing nations, Papua New Guinea is relying on natural resource exploitation to enter the world market. As a result, thousands of Merbau trees have been logged — both legally and illegally — causing harm to the island’s biodiversity.
  • Forest Fires Threaten New Fallout From Chernobyl — The New York Times
    The Chernobyl accident covered more than 77,000 square miles of Europe and Eurasia with radiation that leached into the soils and wildlife. Now as climate change causes an increasing risk of fire, this radiation is posed to be released yet again causing disastrous affects.