Drones have been sent over some of the Peak District’s steepest ravines in a new attempt to repair woodland badly hit by ash dieback, with Natural England using a seeding trial at Dovedale and Lathkill Dale to reach ground crews cannot safely manage. Martin Evans, woodland restoration manager at Natural England, said the damage has created an urgent need to act, but the terrain means teams have to "think creatively". On these crags and wooded slopes, that means finding practical ways to do a hard job safely, not dressing up conservation in buzzwords.

The trial used specially designed drones to spread native seed across a 0.75-hectare plot at Dovedale and another area of the same size at Lathkill Dale. The mix includes field maple, wych elm, alder, small-leaved lime, birch, rowan, yew, goat willow, crab apple and holly, all chosen from the project’s wider planting palette for ravine woodland restoration. Natural England says the exercise is believed to be one of the first of its kind in a steep, compact ravine woodland. Drone reforestation has already been tried on more open upland ground, including in the Scottish Highlands, but taking that approach into tight, shaded dales is a different proposition. It is the sort of place-based innovation people talk about in meetings; here it is being tested on real limestone slopes in Derbyshire.

Anyone who has walked these valleys will understand the access problem. Traditional planting and hand seeding are already under way across the Peak District Dales, carried out by Natural England, the National Trust and others, yet some sections are simply too dangerous or awkward to work on foot. That matters because these woods are doing more than making the dales look good in summer. Adam Linnet, lead ranger for the National Trust in the White Peak, said the ravine trees support wildlife, store carbon, hold the ground together and help reduce erosion and flooding. When ash dieback strips out cover on steep sides, the loss is ecological first, but it is also a problem for the broader area.

The case for drone seeding is straightforward. In places where mature trees are missing and safe access is poor, it offers a way of copying natural seed dispersal without asking staff and volunteers to take unnecessary risks on unstable ground. Linnet said the trial should help show whether technology can let restoration happen at the "pace and scale" now needed. Around the National Nature Reserve at Dovedale and across Lathkill Dale, that could mean filling difficult gaps sooner, giving a more mixed and resilient woodland a better chance of establishing.

Quadrotor Services, working with the project team, has been focused on accuracy. The job is not simply to scatter seed from the air, but to get it through the existing canopy and onto the woodland floor where it has some chance of taking hold. This is also being watched closely as an evidence test. Seed trays have been placed within and around the target areas to measure where the material lands, while one-metre-square plots inside and outside the seeded ground will be checked several times a year to track germination and sapling survival. The project will also compare the cost of drone seeding against more traditional planting and seeding methods, which is the sort of detail that decides whether a trial becomes routine practice.

There is at least some evidence to work with. Quadrotor Services has previously used drones for reforestation in open upland settings in the Scottish Highlands, including slopes above the A83 Rest and Be Thankful road and at Allt Dubh on the Moidart peninsula. Seeds sown there in spring 2024 returned a 2.7 per cent germination rate, above the 1 per cent rate expected for that work. That does not guarantee the same result in the Peak District’s tighter ravines, but it helps explain why the trial is being taken seriously by land managers rather than treated as a gimmick. The conditions are tougher, the space is tighter and the canopy is more complicated.

The drone work sits inside the wider LIFE in the Ravines project, led by Natural England with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, the National Trust and Chatsworth Estate among its partners. More than 100,000 trees have already been planted across the Peak District Dales as part of the push to rebuild woodland after ash dieback. That is the bigger point for places well beyond Derbyshire. It is public-interest innovation in the plainest sense: public bodies, charities and landowners trying to sort out a stubborn local problem with the tools available, then measuring the results properly. If the seeds take and the costs stack up, the lesson from Dovedale and Lathkill Dale will travel. If they do not, the project will still have produced something useful: honest evidence about what works on difficult ground.