About the programme
Closing the gap between restoration plans and actual recovery
Indonesia loses mangroves faster than it can restore them. We built a drone-based workflow so restoration can run at scale without the cost that usually makes it impossible.
The problem
Conventional restoration is expensive and slow
Site surveys are done on foot through thigh-deep mud. Planting scales only with the number of people you can mobilise. Monitoring means walking the same plots again and again. The result is a budget spent mostly on getting people to the site, not on seedlings that survive.
- Manual surveys take weeks for a single site.
- Deep mudflats are often unreachable for ground teams.
- Without routine monitoring, planting failures surface far too late.
- Mobilisation costs cap how much area can realistically be restored.
Our approach
Drones do the heavy lifting, communities do the work
Drones take over exactly the tasks that are most expensive by hand: surveying, dispersing, and re-photographing. Field teams and community groups keep the ecological decisions, nursery work, and aftercare. Everyone works from the same data, and the results are published openly every month.
Workflow
Five stages, repeated every cycle
A full cycle runs roughly four weeks and produces one monthly report.
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01
Aerial survey
Orthomosaic imagery and elevation models reveal substrate conditions and tidal behaviour.
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02
Suitability analysis
Imagery becomes a planting suitability map: species, density, and exact coordinates.
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03
Propagule dispersal
Propagules are placed along the computed coordinates, including in hard-to-reach areas.
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04
Regular monitoring
Monthly re-flights measure survival and changes in canopy cover.
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05
Open reporting
Findings are compiled into a monthly report published openly on this site.
What we do at every site
Precision mapping
Drones survey substrate, tidal patterns, and land cover to pinpoint where planting will actually succeed.
Propagule dispersal
Coordinate-guided dispersal reaches deep mudflats that are slow and risky for ground crews.
Regular monitoring
Monthly re-flights measure survival rates without walking every plot by hand.
Field collaboration
Coastal community groups run the work on the ground and hold a direct stake in the outcome.
Team & partners
Built together
The programme runs on collaboration between drone pilots, coastal ecologists, local government, and community groups.
Let us restore the coast together
Back the mapping, planting, and monitoring that bring coastal ecosystems back into function.