Forest restoration is more than firing seeds from a drone Castro Gutiérrez, Jorge Morales de Rueda, Fernando Alcaraz Segura, Domingo Tabik, Siham Aerial unmanned vehicles Drone seeding Forest restoration success Seed broadcasting Seedling establishment We are witnessing a rapid increase in news sending the message that drone seeding is a promising technological solution to implement forest restoration at large spatial scales. However, there are neither reports regarding success nor peer-reviewed studies to support these assertions. Once in the ground, the seeds and the seedlings and saplings that they generate have to face biotic and abiotic hazards that can strongly reduce regeneration potential. Successful forest restoration, therefore, cannot be achieved by simply dropping seeds from the air. We summarize some aspects to take into account before considering drone seeding as an efficient and widely applicable technology for forest restoration. A first step should be to increase the precision of drone seeding—contrary to the current massive firing of seeds—in order to concentrate the efforts in the best microsites for establishment and reduce the number of seeds needed and the cost of the whole operation. 2022-07-27T11:16:09Z 2022-07-27T11:16:09Z 2022-05-18 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Castro, J... [et al.] (2022), Forest restoration is more than firing seeds from a drone. Restor Ecol e13736. [https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13736] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/76383 10.1111/rec.13736 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Wiley