CarbonFree® Partner
LightHawk
Description
LightHawk provides donated flights at no charge to wildlife biologists, conservation activists, media, and decision makers so they can better understand, and take action to support, healthier wildlife populations throughout the United States and in Mesoamerica. LightHawk provides aerial support to a wide variety of partner groups working on wildlife conservation issues.
The aerial view provided by LightHawk flyovers lends itself particularly well to issues that benefit from a large-scale perspective, as illustrated by the examples below:
-Protection of wildlife migration corridors,
-Monitoring illegal uses of protected lands, and
-Species-specific scientific research and protection efforts.
For more information, please visit us at www.lighthawk.org.
Commitment
Founded in 1979, LightHawk is a nonprofit, volunteer pilot-based organization that flies environmental missions in collaboration with a network of more than 170 pilots and more than 160 partner organizations throughout Central and North America. Our mission is to champion environmental protection through the unique perspective of flight. LightHawk flights provide an intensely powerful and effective platform for research, ground truthing, and environmental awareness and education. This approach to conservation has proven to be very effective in achieving significant environmental outcomes. Seeing what’s going on from above consistently persuades local and national officials, tribal leaders, community activists, and other constituents to act on behalf of the environment.
Through LightHawk, our partners, which range from small local groups to government agencies, are able to accomplish their goals like educating local citizens on the impact of unsustainable forestry practices; photodocumenting and challenging the environmental impacts of misguided oil and gas development; and supporting and informing myriad land-use planning processes. The aerial perspective also can help stakeholders gain an understanding of the issues, challenges, and potential solutions for protection of these ecosystems, identify conflicts and commonalities of interest; or create a communication process that allows differences to be negotiated — which must occur if conservation efforts are to be successful.
LightHawk’s flight support is both free to our partners and highly collaborative, as we work with organizations to identify, design, and execute high-impact flight programs to meet a wide variety of needs. No one knows better than LightHawk how best to use the power of flight to see things differently and bring people and groups together. The services our program staff provide go far beyond matching planes and pilots with missions: we help train flight guides; develop effective route plans and maps; provide event-planning expertise; provide expertise on surveying, ground-truthing, and aerial photography and videography; and offer connections to professional photographers, satellite imagery experts, reporters, and others.
Moreover, LightHawk is an initiator and a catalyst. Our power in this role comes from our vast network of connections with organizations throughout Central and North America—we have worked with more than 400 organizations in the past four years alone. Many of these partners are organizations or government agencies with which LightHawk has developed long-term partnerships. We often fly for our partners on an annual or even monthly basis either to collect data needed to support management programs, or for comparative data needed to track changes in an ecosystem or in species’ migration pattern or behavior. For many of these groups, this work could not be completed without LightHawk.
Partner Quote
“Based on LightHawk’s commitment to the environment, we feel it is our responsibility to adhere to sustainable practices in our emissions, including all flights done by our volunteer pilots. LightHawk believes that by partnering with Carbonfund.org, we are truly making a contribution towards removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”
