What if we could plant a forest… from the sky?
This October, a group of pilots has offered their aircraft to help us carry out the largest seedball airdrop Animal Survival International has ever attempted – sending millions of tiny indigenous seeds onto some of Kenya’s most degraded landscapes.
But we need your help to make it happen.
As Kenya’s forests disappear, elephants, giraffes, birds, antelope and countless other wild animals are being pushed into an ever-shrinking number of remaining green spaces.
As deforestation strips Kenya’s landscape bare, wild animals lose the food, shade and shelter they depend on to survive. Source: samjbasch/iStock
Kenya is losing on average 209,337 acres (84,716 hectares) of forest each year. As trees vanish, so does the food, shade and shelter that wild animals depend on.
For an elephant searching for food or a bird looking for a safe place to nest, a bare, treeless landscape can put survival at risk.
That is why we are preparing for an extraordinary reforestation mission: taking seedballs to the sky and dropping them across areas where forests have disappeared.
Each seedball is tiny, containing an indigenous seed protected inside a coating of charcoal dust. But dropped in the right place, at the right time, these little packages become something much bigger – trees, forest, food and shelter for wildlife.
This October, timing is everything.
Plans are underway to drop seedballs from the sky across areas where forests have disappeared, scattering tiny seeds that could grow into trees and help bring lost forests back to life. Source: Seedballs Kenya
The El Niño weather pattern is predicted to be extremely intense, with meteorological forecasts indicating wetter conditions across Kenya’s arid and semi-arid belt from October 2026 to January 2027. This rain could give scattered seedballs the moisture they need to germinate and begin restoring degraded landscapes much faster than usual.
Miss this window, and it could be too late.
Six tonnes. Three million seedballs. The potential for 600,000 new trees.
We are racing to fund a massive seedballs airdrop before the rains arrive – putting more indigenous seeds into Kenya’s degraded landscapes than we ever have before.
With your help, we can fill an entire aircraft cargo hold with millions of tiny seedballs and send hundreds of thousands of potential trees raining down over areas in desperate need of new life.
Your donation can help us put a forest in the sky:
- $5 (£3.70) – 500 seedballs, 100 trees
- $20 (£14.80) – 2,000 seedballs, 400 trees
- $100 (£74) – 10,000 seedballs, 2,000 trees
- $5,000 (£3,700) – ONE TONNE LEGACY! 500,000 seedballs, 100,000 trees
NOTE: Tree estimates are based on an average 20% seedball germination rate.
What began as a tiny seedball is now a growing seedling, one small step toward restoring the forest that was lost. Source: Seedballs Kenya
Seedballs work. We really can help to create a new forest by bombing the ground with seeds. Imagine looking up as an aircraft passes overhead and seeing the foundations of a new forest falling from the sky. Imagine those seeds taking root, trees beginning to grow, and elephants, giraffes, birds and other wild animals returning to a landscape that has finally turned green again.
That is what we are working to make possible. But we can only do it with your support.
Please donate generously to Animal Survival International today and help us get these seedballs into the sky, onto the ground and growing for Kenya’s wildlife.
