Promoting conservation from a Cessna 210, with Bruce Gordon

We are back with Bruce Gordon, who founded EcoFlight to use airplanes in order to promote conservation.

And Bruce, you do this primarily by giving people a different perspective on the earth from the cockpit of your 210, which in reading about EcoFlight, it brings to mind one of my favorite quotes about flying, which is from William Longavisha, who wrote, flight's greatest gift is to let us look around.

which sounds so obvious, but I think it's profound too.

So I assume you would agree with that quote, but what is it about this aerial view, especially for somebody who's not a pilot, that makes people think in new ways? Yeah, I was going to

start off answering this by saying, as a pilot, which is a lot of your audience, you get a perspective that very few people get to see.

And when you're dealing with conservation issues, you get the continuousness and the contiguousness of the land, how it all fits together.

Where are the watersheds? What are the challenges? So the aerial perspective is, in my opinion, a much-needed tool.

In fact, these days, EcoFlight's flying for over 400 conservation organizations, bringing in the gift of flight.

And we also fly politically.

Our mission is to educate and advocate using small planes.

And education, of course, is the key in everything.

But that aerial perspective really changes people's minds.

So we fly political decision makers, media representatives, concerned citizens, scientists, and we bring back a lot of video nowadays.

I don't have to carry a whole bunch of rolls of film with me.

I can... take some pictures, which I'm not a great photographer, and have them Photoshopped, then I'm a good photographer all of a sudden.

So, you know, and it gives, I like to say, I've been saying this a long time, it gives the land a voice.

You know, when you're flying over an area, for instance, there was a proposed wilderness area down in Arizona.

And, you know, there's pros and cons to all this stuff.

And one of the congressmen I flew, he says, ah, this is crazy.

Why is this line included? And I said, well, let's go up and look at it.

And so we went up and looked at it, and we go, well, holy moly, that's why it's included, a really special-looking place.

Other people will say, oh, we're not in a drought, and there's no – You know, climate change or this or that.

I said, well, maybe there isn't, but let's go fly over Lake Powell and see how it's 50 feet down and all these massive fires that we fly over and see.

You know, so people are all of a sudden not just hearing, oh, there's a fire in Paradise, California.

They're flying with me over what looks like a cigar ash, you know, all these houses devastated.