by Nomad
One company wants to apply cutting edge technology to tackle one of the world's greatest threats to life on this planet- Man's global destruction of forests.
Drones have quickly developed a
lousy reputation for being Remote controlled killing machines. Their use in the
war on terror has admittedly become the bane of the leaders of ISIS and Taliban camps
but, like "smart bombs", there have also been growing questions about whether justice is being sacrificed for expediency and about the collateral damage these devices inflict on civilians.
In fact the military use of drones overshadows their civilian applications. The term "drone" refers to any remote controlled aerial device and that covers a wide spectrum, from
hunter-killer surveillance craft to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
One start-up firm, UK-based
Biocarbon Engineering, is
looking at the unique problem-solving capabilities of drones to combat the destruction
of global forests.
The Scope of the Problem
Franklin Roosevelt once said:
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.
That was back in the 1930s and the problem has not only continued but the
global rate of deforestation continues to increase at a frightening speed.
The world-wide calamity of de-forestation
cannot be left to future generations to resolve. Every year, it is estimated
that over 25 billion trees are removed from forests while only 15 billion are
planted.
According to the United Nations'
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
more than 18 million acres (7.3 million hectares) of forest, an area about the
size of the country of Panama, are lost each year and they say that about half
of the world's tropical forests have already been cleared.
