The volunteers fly to help investigate a variety of issues, such as deforestation, threats to watersheds, and energy and pollution problems. Also, urban sprawl is becoming an increasingly common issue (related photos: urban sprawl).
"You name it, we've probably flown for it," said Sama Blackwell, the program manager for Lighthawk, who is based in Boulder, Colorado.
Most of the organizations that use Lighthawk are conservation groups and other environmental activists. But Blackwell stresses that Lighthawk does not take sides when it comes to a particular environmental issue.
"We want to make sure that our partners are interested in solutions," she said.
"We don't want to come into an area and say, Here's what you should do. What we try to do is provide the information so people locally can make the decisions."
Dumping Trash
As staff director for the Sierra Club's California-Nevada-Hawaii office, Zichella plans to use the photographs he took over Anza-Borrego for testimony and presentations and to recommend alternative routes for the controversial power line.
"This kind of [aerial] documentation has helped us save so many of these places," he said. "It's had a powerful effect on public opinion and helped decision-makers better understand what's at stake."
Rick Durden, Lighthawk's executive director, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has been a volunteer pilot with the organization for nearly 20 years.
He says aerial surveys can be far more time-efficient than surveys on the ground.
"With an aircraft and some preparation you can do a great deal very quickly," he said.
One of Durden's missions helped expose a Chicago, Illinois-area politician who was violating a recycling contract by dumping trash he was supposed to have recycled on a private farm.
The dump site was screened by trees. Because it was private property, environmentalists couldn't access the area on foot.
"We flew over and videotaped trucks dumping the trash into the ground," Durden said.
Global Coverage
Lighthawk's success has inspired a group of pilots to form a similar organization in South Africa called Bateleurs.
The group, based in Johannesburg, now has more than a hundred volunteer pilots and flies about 30 to 40 missions a year (related photos: Africa from the air).
"At the grassroots level it is often impossible to see what lies on the far side of the hill, either by topographical or access exclusion," co-founder Nora Kreher said.
Bateleurs not only conducts environmental surveys but also relocates animals in peril, such as cheetahs and baby elephants.
Back in the United States, Parker, the Lighthawk pilot, says the destruction of natural resources he witnesses on his missions sometimes shocks him.
"Certainly there are a lot of alarming signs," he said. "If we're going to have anything worth saving, we're going to have to be fairly aggressive about saving as much public land as we can.
"We're running out of time. I think that's obvious."
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