On Friday November 8, the day after the Cosco Busan freighter struck the Bay Bridge and dumped 58,000 gallons of toxic fuel oil into San Francisco Bay, Judd Klement, Pacific Coast program manager for LightHawk, put out a call for a volunteer pilot. The mission, requested by Save the Bay, was to fly with a photographer over the water to provide an aerial perspective on the disaster and document its course.

“We wanted these images to help direct immediate recovery efforts, point cleaning and skimming crews to places where the oil was, and also to help NOAA and state agencies with damage assessment,” explained David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay.

A quick response came from David McConnell, one of ten or so LightHawk pilots in the Bay Area: he could be at the airport in Novato, Marin County, within a half-hour, ready with his four-seater high-wing Cessna.

Before long, McConnell and photographer Rob Badger, who had likewise volunteered, were looking down at spreading streaks of oil and watching some of the belated efforts to contain it with booms. On shore, people in white hazmat suits were shoveling sand drenched in black goo into huge white plastic bags. “On the south end of Angel Island it was on the beach, the rocks, in the water,” Badger reported. To McConnell, “to clean it up seemed an impossible task.”

Some of the photographs from the flight were promptly posted on Save the Bay’s website. They will be valuable when it comes to decisions about cleanup and recovery efforts, and who should pay. “LightHawk is a huge resource,” Lewis said. “It offers a quick and flexible way to document visually, in real time, what is happening and what has happened.”

Ready to Respond
LightHawk is a nonprofit organization with headquarters in Lander, Wyoming, that has brought together a network of pilots who own or have access to small aircraft to volunteer for campaigns and projects that benefit the natural environment. Since 1979, these pilots--about 140 nationwide right now, 23 in California--have been flying environmental missions, mostly in this country and in Mesoamerica. “LightHawk does not lead campaigns. It provides aerial support to campaigns led by others,” said Mike Sutton, director of the Center for the Future of the Oceans at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and a LightHawk board member and volunteer pilot. The organization’s earlier name was Environmental Air Force, and that name still describes it, Sutton said.

Besides being ready to respond quickly during environmental emergencies, LightHawk has extended a wide variety of aerial assistance to environmental groups and sometimes to government agencies, enabling their representatives to see things that are difficult or impossible to detect from the ground; illegal logging in roadless wilderness, for instance, or dumping of drums filled with toxic waste in remote rural areas. It has assisted in many campaigns to protect precious natural resources.

“A potential partner will contact us and, if the request fits LightHawk’s purpose and would provide a clear benefit to the partner, I send a request to pilots in the area,” said Klement. “Once a pilot is located, I work out all the logistics between pilot and partner.” A person knowledgeable on the subject at issue is enlisted as guide. There’s a briefing at the airport before take-off, and a meeting and discussion after landing. In New Mexico, where the State opposed the federal government’s attempt to open 101,000 acres in the Valle Vidal to oil and gas drilling, the guide on at least one flight in 2004 was Governor Bill Richardson’s secretary of energy, minerals, and natural resources. Congressional leaders of both parties joined to pass a bill protecting the valley in perpetuity.

The planes are usually light four- to six-seat aircraft. The pilots are a diverse lot, including emergency room physicians, airline pilots, and a goodly number of conservative businessmen with strong environmental concerns, said Sutton. They tend to be “fans of the landscape, united by their love of aviation and love of the environment.”

The principal goal of most flights is to give everyone aboard a clear view, from the same perspective, of what’s at stake. The effect of a flight has often been huge. Sutton calls it “the conversion experience.” After seeing the interconnectedness of the landscape, people begin to think differently.

As is stated on the LightHawk website, www. lighthawk.org: “From the air you can see the way landslides from a logging road carry mud downslope to the once-shaded river, choking it with silt so that it warms and slows and cannot support the wild salmon that used to swim up it to spawn. The view from a small plane reveals misuse of protected land, like off-road vehicle damage in a designated wilderness area or illegal mining operations in a Mesoamerican forest. From above, in fact, there’s not much you can’t see . . . the view from above speaks for itself, providing breathtaking clarity of understanding.”

The Aerial Perspective
In California, LightHawk played a unique role in helping to win federal legislation that has protected more wilderness areas and--a matter of special pride for Sutton--in helping to establish the first network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) along the Central Coast. The MPA proposal was being hotly debated and more public support was needed. So in 2006, at the request of the Ocean Conservancy, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Otter Project, LightHawk staged what Sutton called a “blitzkrieg.” Pilots from around the country gathered in Monterey for the organization’s annual fly-in, an event held at a location where they can be especially useful. A series of two-hour flights was arranged over the 200-mile coastal stretch between Point Conception and Half Moon Bay, within which the network of MPAs was proposed. Aboard were media representatives, government officials, and leaders of organizations engaged in the MPA discussions. The guide was Meg Caldwell, former chair of the Coastal Commission and director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program at Stanford University Law School.

“We looked at how land-use practices affect MPAs,” said Sutton, “land-based sources of ocean pollution, forest practices, suburban sprawl, encroachment of development on agricultural lands. And we saw the beauty of the coast, the kelp forests, rocky reefs, gray whales breaching, all kinds of wildlife. The aerial perspective makes things real for people.” Sutton took up a reporter and photographer from the Associated Press. The resulting story ran in over a hundred newspapers.

From the air it is obvious that ecosystems extend across national boundaries--a fact often ignored on the ground. “Currently, about half the flying missions are in Mesoamerica--Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico,” Sutton said. “We have looked at the enormous destruction of mangroves in favor of shrimp farms, at illegal logging on the border of Guatemala and Belize. We’ve supported the fight to protect monarch butterfly roosting sites in northern Sonora [Mexico] from illegal logging. You can see the monarchs from the air--so many millions they stain the green canopy orange. Without these flights, scientists would not have been able to locate areas where the butterflies concentrate and try to protect them.”

First-Hand Views
When the Mexican government announced protections for monarch habitat late this year, LightHawk did not step up for applause. Neither did it do so when the California Fish and Game Commission established the MPA network in April 2007 (see Ebb & Flow Updates). “LightHawk never takes credit for winning a campaign,” said Sutton. “Most of the effort is ground troops slogging it out, day by day.” This reticence, however, doesn’t help when the organization needs financial support. Much of its funding comes from individual donors. The pilots usually pay fuel costs and other expenses, and donate both time and the use of their aircraft.

Sometimes Sutton is asked: Are these flights really necessary today, when remote sensing systems are bringing back fantastic images for all to see? “Looking at things through glass is not the same as being out with them,” is his response. “It’s the difference between going to an aquarium and scuba diving.”

For Sutton, LightHawk is a good fit with his goals as director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s newest program, the Center for the Future of the Oceans, which aims to inspire action for the ocean on the part of individuals, corporate leaders, and policy makers. LightHawk pilots volunteer because they love to fly, and what they see while in the air distresses them. They have found a unique way to do something personally for the blue planet.