Cameron Jones (LLM 2025) was a child when lightning started a wildfire near his family’s home on the edge of Okanagan Mountain Park in British Columbia. In August 2003 the fire spread across 250 square kilometres and destroyed 239 homes. More than twenty years later, he says, the land is still barren.
That memory sent Cameron and his brother Bryce toward a question about forests. Most replanting still relies on shovels, bags and seedlings. In 2019 the brothers and Angelique Ahlström founded Flash Forest, a company that fires seed pods into the ground from drones and helicopters, reaching land that crews can barely get to.
Built in a greenhouse at UTM
The pods took shape with help from U of T’s iCUBE accelerator. The team worked in the greenhouses at U of T Mississauga to refine each one, which carries nutrients and a way to hold water so the seedling can survive its first two years. Imaging, machine learning and automation then guide the planting.
This spring U of T Facilities & Services partnered with Flash Forest to plant 68,345 trees in the Assinica Wildlife Reserve in northern Quebec. The land had burned in the summer of 2023.
It feels positive to engage with the technologyJimmy Lord, director of the Assinica Wildlife Reserve
The Oujé-Bougoumou Cree First Nation was a partner in the project. Jones says the community helped with species selection and site access, and that its members collected millions of local seeds.
The project is supported by the Carbon Reduction Fund run by the U of T Sustainability Office, which finances emissions-cutting projects to offset the university’s travel. Over the next 100 years the new trees are projected to capture 33,000 tonnes of CO2.
Reported from U of T plants more than 68,000 trees with help of alumni-founded startup (U of T Alumni News, October 2, 2026).
More from the original reporting: alumni.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-plants-more-68000-trees-help-alumni-founded-startup