LightHawk is a nonprofit, volunteer pilot-based organization that flies environmental missions in collaboration with a network of more than 130 pilots and hundreds of partner organizations throughout North and Central America. LightHawk's mission is to champion environmental protection through the unique perspective of flight. The organization's flight support is both free to conservation partners and highly collaborative, as they work with organizations to identify, design, and execute high-impact flight programs to meet a wide variety of needs. LightHawk has been providing flight services for conservation organizations, the media, decision-makers, community members and researchers since 1979, making it the largest and oldest volunteer-based environmental aviation organization in North America.

LightHawk provides a unique service that many wilderness and conservation groups have taken advantage of to advance their campaigns in recent years. Here are just a few examples of the success storied that partnerships with LightHawk have created:

Vermont Wilderness Campaign - March 2005

LightHawk flew Vermont-based Forest Watch, one of sixteen organizations working in partnership as the Vermont Wilderness Association (VWA), in an effort to protect more than 80,000 acres of Green Mountain National Forest land as wilderness (and another 60,000 acres as National Recreation Area). This flight allowed staff to photodocument southern portions of the Forest being proposed for wilderness designation in advance of a "map meeting" with Vermont's congressional delegation, which will aid the continued development of a Vermont Wilderness bill. These proposed areas, and their boundaries, are the most highly contentious in the wilderness debate, due in part to heavy snowmobile use, legal and otherwise.

Flights in Support of Proposed Wild Sky Wilderness - February 2005

LightHawk took the Sierra Club, Cascade Chapter over the proposed Wild Sky Wilderness in Washington State to gather photos and note conditions within and near the boundaries of the areas. The Sierra Club will use the images to support or amend details in the Wild Sky Wilderness Act and to use as baseline data to track changes or threats to the landscape. The Act, if passed, would protect 106,000 acres of forests, rivers, valleys and mountains in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Permanent protection of the diverse forest landscape is expected to ensure the futures of fish and wildlife throughout the region, safeguard excellent recreational opportunities and bolster the economies of local communities.

Flights Document Snowmobile Trespassing in Wilderness - Winter 2004-2005

LightHawk flights aid many groups in their efforts to monitor the trespassing of snowmobiles in Wilderness areas. The following groups are some examples of the groups working in partnership with LightHawk to solve this illegal, yet increasing, activity. All are using LightHawk flights to locate and document trespassing snowmobilers:

• The Friends of the Clearwater are monitoring snowmobiles inside the Gospel Hump, Selway-Bitterroot, and Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Areas involving the Payette, Salmon, and Boise National Forests;
  
• The Montana Wilderness Association uses LightHawk flights to locate trespassing snowmobiles in the Mission Mountain Wilderness Area and the Jewel Basin WSA on the Flathead National Forest, where cuts to the National Forest budget have prevented the agency from conducting enforcement flights in recent years; and in the Bob Marshall Wilderness of the Lewis and Clark, Lolo, and Helena National Forests.
  
• Friends of the Bitterroot took flights over two Wilderness Study Areas, the Sapphire and the West Pioneer, to monitor snowmobile use in these areas. Information gathered will be used as evidence in a lawsuit to protect Montana's WSAs.

LightHawk Media Flight to Fight Oil and Gas Development in Colorado's Proposed Granite Creek Wilderness - October 2004

LightHawk flew a guide from Colorado Environmental Coalition with a reporter and a photographer from the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel over Granite Creek proposed wilderness area that is being opened up for oil and gas development. The Bureau of Land Management offered for lease more than 15,000 acres located within seven areas proposed by citizens and pending before Congress for wilderness protection. Including the upcoming sale, 43,600 acres of citizens' proposed wilderness in Colorado have been offered for auction in the past 24 months. The Granite Creek flight resulted in a feature story, as well as an editorial on November 1, 2004 in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel titled, "BLM should preserve primitive Granite Creek."

White Mountain National Forest Wilderness Campaign - October 2004

A LightHawk Volunteer Pilot flew Congressional staff, along with guides from the Friends of Sandwich Range (FOSR), the Friends of Wild River, and The Wilderness Society (TWS), groups which are working towards designating additional wilderness in New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest. This forest is the largest area of public land in New England and one of the most popular forests in the entire National Forest System. An overflight of the area lent a better understanding of the forest and its management issues. On the flight, the first in a series of Congressional flights, guides from FOSR and TWS had the opportunity to point out and discuss differences between wilderness area boundaries in their proposal and those provided in Forest Service's wilderness recommendation.

"This flight confirmed that we've mapped out a good route for later congressional flights and helped us to understand how congressional staffers relate to maps and landforms while flying. Flying over the area always brings up new ideas for more wilderness protection. And already we've been able to use the flight in describing to the U.S. Forest Service the conditions of the forest with which we are concerned," said Fred Lavigne of Friends of Sandwich Range.

For more information about how your wilderness campaign can partner with LightHawk

Contact Sama Blackwell at LightHawk
303-433-4166