LightHawk : 2016 Flying to save the Earth

We fly to save the Earth

Beautiful things are worth saving. We know that once people truly see the majesty of our planet, they’ll fight to protect it. By removing the shackles of gravity, our carefully-crafted flights help people attain a higher perspective of conservation, find a deeper understanding of the natural world and reframe their role within it.

What We Protect

We ensure each flight has a distinct conservation outcome that fits into our bigger picture — called our Conservation Initiatives. These are five areas where aviation can create the biggest positive change for the environment.

How We Create Change

As a partner-focused, nonpartisan organization, our flight campaigns provide a platform for seeing the truth below. Passengers see the impact humans have on the environment and feel a renewed responsibility to our natural world. Here’s how we do it.

Where We Flew in 2016

Planned & Completed Flights: January 2016 - March 2017

Conserving Landscapes

Healthy landscapes are crucial to our well-being and nature’s ability to thrive.

We fly to conserve critical and sensitive landscapes, their ecosystems and the wildlife that call them home. We address threats that would cause damage, advocate for science-based land management, and seek to increase the amount of public and private land conserved to be enjoyed by future generations.

Flagship Projects:

Heart of the Rockies

Funders:

Smart Family Foundation

Cedar Tree Foundation

Protecting a Climate Change Ally

The future is in the forests.

Forests are critical to our health and wellbeing. But forest cover across New England steadily declines each day as development and unsustainable forestry practices take a bite. More than 100,000 acres will be buzz-sawed for urban uses each year over the next three decades, reports say.

Forests conserved at the landscape level safeguard wildlife and the ecosystem, as well as human health with pure water, clean air and recreation. Forests are also a key ally in fighting the effects of climate change.

Those benefits, however, are sometimes at odds with the region’s growth and the $5 billion timber industry. Along with our partners, LightHawk is elevating the discussion in hopes of balancing a critical source of economy with an essential source of health for residents of one of America’s fastest growing megaregions.

But tapping the full potential of forests is only possible by first ensuring they remain forests, unfragmented by development. In that quest, we partnered with the New England Forestry Foundation in western Maine on a series of flights to survey 10,000 acres, to orient their staff, and educate board members.

LightHawk flights were “crucial to inspiring the board to approve these projects,” allowing NEFF staff to secure funding to place the area under conservation easement, said Charlie Reinertsen, NEFF’s communications manager.

“Walking the property, it is hard to get the full context of the landscape and the land-use history, including past harvests and existing roads or trails,” Reinertsen said. “This in-the-air view of the property was incredibly valuable because it was able to put the properties in the context of the greater landscape.”

We plan to expand our work across Western Maine in hopes of conserving even more critical forest habitat.

Protecting Oceans & Coasts

Thriving oceans and coastlines are home to incredible life and provide a bounty of food and wellness for humans.

We fly to protect our sensitive coastlines, estuaries, oceans and sea life. We monitor the health of marine protected areas, work to increase safeguards, show the potential impacts of climate change, and shine a light on pollution or other damage to these life-sustaining areas.

Flagship Projects

Marine Protected Areas

Funders

Resources Legacy Fund

The Campbell Foundation

Empowering Coastal Communities to Prepare for Climate Change

Seeing is believing.

It’s hard to show people the potential of how climate change will impact their daily lives.

But for the millions who make their home and livelihood on our nation’s shores, the world’s largest environmental threat is becoming real faster than ever with sea levels anticipated to rise up to three feet in the next 50 to 100 years.

LightHawk has flown 12 missions since 2014 to photograph king tides along the Pacific coast. These tides — the highest of the year when the sun, moon and Earth are aligned — can show us what our normal future tides may become.

These elevated water levels provide a snapshot of what’s at risk — crippling damage to infrastructure such as roads, bridges, homes and utilities. Sea level rise will also impact the wetland and tidal area ecosystems our partners are charged with managing and protecting.

LightHawk flights help leaders understand how to prepare and adapt, spread the word, raise awareness and inform policy along coastal areas already under significant growth pressure.

“We learned a lot from our flights, including a better understanding of the efforts already underway to protect property from rising seas and the challenge we have ahead of us to ensure natural systems such as wetlands can adapt to rising sea levels,” said Ray Hiemstra, Associate Director of Programs for Orange County Coastkeeper.

We will continue working with our partners to document the impacts of rising sea levels and to raise climate change awareness.

Ensuring Species Survival

Protecting endangered animals from extinction is our enduring responsibility.

We fly to restore threatened and endangered species to sustainable populations. We allow scientists to gather data critical to their survival and support captive breeding programs.

Flagship Projects

California Condor Recovery

Salmon

Funders

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Beagle Charitable Foundation

Safeguarding Imperiled Shorebirds and their Sensitive Habitat

The red knot is an extraordinary flier.

In the course of its life, it may migrate farther than the distance to the moon. But it cannot out-fly the threats along its path.

The red knot and similar shorebirds are showing the most drastic declines of any group of birds. Human disruption, habitat loss and degradation, and climate change are among the top threats that put these birds at extreme risk. Already, populations across the Americas have shrunk by an estimated 70 percent, forcing researchers to warn that without action, some species might go extinct.

We’ve worked closely to fly with partners and locate habitat of the threatened red knot, American oystercatcher and other sensitive species of shorebirds throughout the northwest Mexican coastline. The area is a geographically-crucial wintering and migration stop, hosting more than one million shorebirds from 31 species.

The best way to locate shorebird aggregations is through aerial surveys as many sites are not accessible by road, said Abril Heredia, graduate student with Dr. Eduardo Palacios of our partner Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, B.C. (CICESE) Our work with CICESE allowed scientists to count enough birds on a particular island to confirm its importance as a stopover site. That discovery allows CICESE to advocate for new, elevated protections.

“Many of these species are very vulnerable to changes in habitat, so knowing the health of the ecosystem is critical to be able to establish conservation strategies in the short and long term. This information would not have been possible without the help of LightHawk,” said Jonathan Vargas, a graduate student working with Dr. Palacios at CICESE.

We will continue empowering scientists and helping decision makers understand and identify threats to shorebird habitat.

Safeguarding Rivers

Rivers and wetlands form a network of life that flows through our lands and communities.

We fly to keep those waters and their natural ecosystems healthy, and keep human communities thriving. We work to restore altered river systems to their native states, protect them from pollution, sedimentation and diversion, and safeguard the integrity of our drinking water.

Flagship Projects

Everglades

Delaware River Watershed

Funders

The Batchelor Foundation, Inc.

William Penn Foundation

Restoring Clean Water to one of America’s Most Burdened Rivers

The Delaware River carries a heavy load.

Each drop of this river is reused 20 times. And while its footprint is less than one percent of the nation’s land, it provides drinking water to five percent of the nation’s population — more than 15 million people.

The burden, however, was once much heavier — the river ranked as one of America’s most polluted rivers. But the Delaware has made a scrappy comeback.

LightHawk flies extensively in this area — some of the nation’s most restrictive airspace — in hopes of easing the load the river has to bear. The view from above has illustrated this complex watershed, and spurred long-term action to improve water quality.

In the mountainous northern sections of the watershed, we focus on the land’s ability to naturally and sustainably purify the whole watershed, working to increase forested buffers and create the conditions that allow wetlands to thrive.

In the tidal south, we help inform science of the critical balance of fresh and saline waters. This balance impacts the health of wetlands and thus the river’s overall health, and its resilience to respond to sea level rise caused by climate change.

Flight is a great tool to illustrate the importance of on-the-ground work, said Sherri Albrecht, board member of The Land Conservancy of New Jersey, a partner who works to protect watersheds throughout New Jersey.

“We’ve preserved a lot of land, but there is so much more to do,” Albrecht said. “The low flyover perspective is the best way to observe this, and will be a valuable opportunity for fundraising and education so we can continue to accomplish our mission.”

We will continue to build extensive flight campaigns within critical watershed.

Guiding Smart Growth

Land use change is an unavoidable part of our society and future, yet it is our duty to do so in harmony with nature.

We fly to inform smart growth and minimize our impacts on the natural world. We assist community planners in gathering data, allowing them to see growth as they have never seen it before. We work to increase quality of life for citizens by helping them see the connection between their community and the natural world.

Flagship Projects

Sun Corridor

Funders

Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust

Balancing Rapid Growth with Delicate Desert Ecosystems

It’s not just elbow room — it’s a matter of survival.

Arizona’s Sun Corridor will double in population by 2040. One of America’s fastest growing areas is also one of its most environmentally-sensitive, increasing pressure on a North American gem – the Sonoran Desert.

The area has some of the greatest diversity of life of any North American desert and a landscape diversity rivaling all others. Smart growth is a life and death matter with wildlife and humanity sharing an arid, diverse and interconnected landscape.

LightHawk has worked extensively with a partner, the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, to ease the many ways people impact the landscape and its wildlife. LightHawk flights have saved staff days of work and hundreds of miles of driving, they say.

LightHawk also flew to support a new wildlife overpass and underpass north of Tucson. Before the project, 255 road kills were reported in four months. Since opening in March 2016, more than 1,000 animals from 13 different species have safely used the crossings.

Flights captured footage, raised public support, empowered staff and engaged the Coalition’s supporters like Elizabeth Deupree.

Deupree said her LightHawk flight was “instrumental for me to see the staggering encroachment of humans and housing developments in and so close to natural watershed areas and migratory paths.” The flight inspired her to support a wildlife camera monitoring program and advocate for others to support the project as well.

“To start looking for funding and to raise three-fourths of our goal in a matter of two days has surpassed all expectation and we could not have done it without (LightHawk),” said Sarah Whelan, Coalition Program and Outreach Associate.

We will continue investing in this area to balance growth with conservation.

Flagship Projects & Partners

Within each of our Conservation Initiatives we have established one or more Flagship Projects — thoughtfully-chosen areas and issues where we’re committed to making an impact for years to come with hand-picked partners.

Pilot Awards

Each year we present awards at our annual Fly-In to the best and most dedicated volunteer pilots. Although we highlight the efforts of these pilots, each LightHawk pilot is crucial to our success.

Our Volunteer Pilots

Our Finances

One of LightHawk’s fundamental principles is that every expense is evaluated and must help us achieve our mission. Less than one-fourth of our expenses are used to build our core through administration, fundraising and communications. That core is fundamental to the success of our conservation program.

Most of our funding comes from the generosity of individual donors, and one-third of all our support is a result of our volunteer pilots donating their plane, fuel and time. Foundations provided about one-fifth of our support.

Magic From the Air

Magic is the best word to describe it.

When I was a kid, I loved flying in the “puddle jumper” between our home in Wyoming and Denver.

From that plane, I vividly remember the sensation of watching the place I love so much come into full focus. From the geology to hydrology — It gave a 6-year-old me an intuitive and amazingly accurate understanding of how things fit in the big picture. It was — and still is — just plain magic.

LightHawk is unique. We provide an immersive and irreplaceable education borne of aerial experience. We give each passenger the same quality of illumination I had high over rural Wyoming, to create that same kind of magic.

It’s been the effort of this report to relay just how we do this. It ain’t easy; it takes a lot of visioning, planning and persistence. But more importantly, it takes you.

Our community of volunteer pilots, foundations, advocates, partners and donors fuels the powerful magic of every conservation flight.

As an important member of LightHawk’s team, here’s how you can help. Please share this report with those who might find value in our work — your friends and family, pilots you know and your favorite conservation group.

Consider making a monthly or one-time gift. Several of our volunteer pilots who donate both flights and funds have said it best, ‘When you donate to LightHawk, you’re investing in a conservation portfolio of hundreds of partners and projects at once.’

Thank you for all that you do to make us soar. We are honored to turn your investments into results. Together, we will continue creating magic.

Fair winds and blue skies.

– Terri Watson, Chief Executive Officer

LightHawk is headquartered in beautiful Fort Collins, Colorado.

Mail Service: PO Box 2710, Telluride, CO 81435

Questions? Want more copies of this report? Email us at info@lighthawk.org

Report Abuse

If you feel that this video content violates the Adobe Terms of Use, you may report this content by filling out this quick form.

To report a Copyright Violation, please follow Section 17 in the Terms of Use.