Our Partner
SouthWings
http://www.southwings.org
Asheville, NC
Aviation
Description
SouthWings is a conservation and public benefit aviation non-profit that provides skilled pilots and aerial education to enhance conservation efforts across the southeastern United States. Our team and our service are unique, combining the knowledge of conservation issues with experienced piloting skills. We enable those we fly to better understand, from an otherwise inaccessible vantage point, the globally significant ecosystems of the Southeast. Through the aerial perspective, SouthWings’ service provides experiential understanding of environmental challenges and opportunities for conservation. This perspective fosters understanding of scale/magnitude, and the relationships of cumulative and compounding environmental effects. We provide a means to educate public and elected officials, media, community leaders, researchers and conservation organizations.
Commitment
As a conservation nonprofit, SouthWings’ commitment to the environment is at the very core of what we do. Our office-based operations take care to source the necessary office supplies and materials for events from the most sustainable sources available and to reduce our energy consumption wherever possible. Our office is located in downtown Asheville to encourage staff to use public transportation or bike/walk to work. The office is day-lit, office furniture is purchased second-hand to promote reuse, and we are moving towards paperless office operations using energy efficient office equipment.
As a volunteer pilot organization, our flight operations comprise the most significant portion of our carbon footprint. We reduce this impact as much as possible by matching our flight partner organizations with the closest available pilot. As of 2009, we purchase offsets to mitigate the impact of the carbon dioxide emitted as a result of all of our flights.
Partner Quote
“SouthWings utilizes the expertise of experienced pilots and knowledge of conservation issues to protect the natural environment throughout the southeast. We believe it is imperative to minimize our impact on this environment and are pleased to partner with Carbonfund.org’s CarbonFree program to offset the emissions from each of our flights throughout the year.”
