Instagram story viewer> @ecoflight> Posts

EcoFlight ✈

@ecoflight

5.5K

followers

1483

following

EcoFlight educates and advocates for the protection of remaining wild lands and wildlife habitat using small aircraft. Join us, give the land a voice!

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

🚨 Utah politicians just introduced resolutions to overturn the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument management plan. If they get their way, these resolutions overturn a management plan that was shaped by YEARS of public input and scientific research. It will also set a dangerous precedent for dismantling national monuments across the country.

CALL ON YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TODAY TO SAVE GRAND STAIRCASE-ESCALANTE NATIONAL MONUMENT IN UTAH.

Urge Congress to reject these short-sighted resolutions, which will:

❌ Offer NO public comment period

❌ Reverse years of local input, science, and Tribal consultation

❌ Cause uncertainty for outfitters, guides, local businesses, and grazing permittees

#SaveGrandStaircase #MonumentsForAll #KeepPublicLandsInPublicHands #ConservationAviation #YourEyeInTheSky by @ecoflight

390

9

7 months ago

Who is EcoFlight? Answering your questions!!
We are a small and dedicated non-profit, using the unique perspective of flight to inspire and inform environmental stewardship.

By taking journalists, students, community leaders, and decision-makers on aerial educational flights, EcoFlight reveals the full story of our landscapes — from the beauty of wild places to the visible impacts of development and climate change.

EcoFlight takes people where roads and trails can’t — into the skies above the most critical ecosystems in the West. Seeing landscapes and human activities from above transforms understanding into action, helping shape smarter policies and stronger protections for the lands, waters, and communities that sustain us all. by @ecoflight

3

0

a year ago

We stand with the Pueblos, Tribal Nations, and communities fighting to protect Greater Chaco.

Over two days, EcoFlight flew four flights out of Farmington, NM, over the Chaco landscape: advocates from Tribes connected to Chaco, @enviroam, a retired interpretive ranger, staff from Rep. @teresafornm & @melanieinthe505 offices, @westernwatergirl, and historian Will of @NationalParkHistory.

The route followed the ancient North Road south toward Chaco Canyon. Outside the protected zone, the land is etched with oil and gas roads, well pads, and pipeline scars. Then, crossing into the 10-mile protection buffer, the development nearly disappears, until Fajada Butte and Pueblo Bonito come into view.

That buffer is a 20-year mineral withdrawal, established in 2023, that closes roughly 336,000 acres of public land around Chaco Culture National Historical Park to new oil, gas, and mining development. It took decades of advocacy and years of public process to win.

Now the Interior Department is moving to revoke it, after giving the public just 14 days to weigh in.

Chaco is sacred and irreplaceable. We stand by the 10-mile buffer and support making it permanent through the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act. Thank you to our flight partners for their critical advocacy 🙏🌵
@nrdc_action @npcapics by @ecoflight

44

0

5 days ago

Today we celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day! Across the West, EcoFlight is honored to fly with Tribal leaders and communities who are relentless in their fight to protect their homelands.

Today, we’re highlighting five WINS where Tribes have led the charge to protect extraordinary, sacred landscapes, and where the view from above is helping them succeed!

One year ago today, five Tribal Nations united to form the Chuckwalla National Monument Inter-Tribal Commission to ensure Tribal Knowledge and values guide the care of more than 600,000 acres of sacred California desert.

As the monument has come under attack this year, EcoFlight is flying Tribal Leaders, Tribal-led nonprofits, and lawmakers over Chuckwalla to show what’s at stake and to support efforts defend it.

After the largest dam removal in U.S. history, salmon are swimming into stretches of the Klamath they haven’t reached in a century.

That happened because the Klamath Tribes and other Tribal Nations fought for decades to restore the river.

Flights show the river as it comes back to life and help restoration projects progress.

For the Blackfeet Nation, buffalo (Iinnii) are relatives. Their return is both cultural renewal and ecological restoration. Across the Northern Plains, Tribal Nations are bringing buffalo home.

EcoFlight is proud to fly with the Blackfeet Nation in support of their buffalo restoration work, flying Blackfeet high school students alongside Tribal elders to learn about land restoration from above and see the prairies where buffalo are returning, from a whole new perspective.

For decades, Diné families with Save the Confluence fought off a gondola resort, hydropower dams, and other development at the sacred meeting of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers in the Grand Canyon. This August, the Navajo Nation Council voted 18–0 to formally protect the confluence as a sacred site.

EcoFlight was proud to fly these grassroots Tribal groups and other leaders to help defend this remarkable, grand landscape.

Through Flight Across America, college students came together from different universities, states, Tribes, and backgrounds.

From the air and on the ground, they lear by @ecoflight

47

0

7 days ago

From the air, the Roan Plateau tells a story you can’t see from I-70. 🛩️

Public lands atop the Roan Plateau are an island of bright green forests and meadows in a see of wellpapds stretching across the Colorado River Valley. Aspen groves, meadows, and clear streams shelter some of Colorado’s largest elk and mule deer herds and genetically unique Colorado River cutthroat trout.

Hunters, anglers, local governments, and conservationists worked for more than a decade to keep drilling off the top. Now the BLM plans to offer about 5,000 acres on top of the plateau in its December lease sale, even though Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources have asked it to defer those parcels.

Earthjustice’s Michael Freeman makes the case in this week’s @coloradosun op-ed: “Issuing new leases on the Roan would tell the public that such agreements will not last.”🦌💧

@earthjustice @coloradoparksandwildlife @wildernessworkshop @wildernesssociety @senatorbennet @senatorhick
#RoanPlateau #KeepItPublic #PublicLands #ConservationAviation taken in Garfield County by @ecoflight

32

2

9 days ago

Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon is at a crossroads. UDOT just spent nearly $8 million of taxpayer money to purchase 8 acres at the canyon mouth for a gondola base. 💸🏔️

EcoFlight has been flying with @saveourcanyons to give lawmakers, media, and community members an aerial view of what’s at stake in the Wasatch. We’ll keep flying to advocate that decisionmakers choose real solutions to address traffic congestion.

Check out @saveourcanyons to learn about the proposed gondola. by @ecoflight

34

0

16 days ago

Groups appeal largest coal mine ever permitted in the US, calling its approval on Navajo land ‘disturbing’ in light of coal’s downward economic spiral
•
FARMINGTON, N.M. – Navajo and New Mexico grassroots community groups have appealed a federal permit for the expansion of a coal mine on the Navajo Nation that would dig up more than 500 million tons over the next 110 years – the largest coal mine ever permitted in the United States – despite the fact the mining company’s only customer is scheduled to retire in the next decade.
•
The appeal by Navajo community group Tó Nizhóní Ání (TNA) and Four Corners-based San Juan Citizens Alliance (SJCA) asks the U.S. Dept. of the Interior to vacate the permit issued by the Federal Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement for the so-called No Name Mine.
•
Read the full press release at the 🔗 in @tonizhoniani’s bio
•
📸 Photo courtesy of @ecoflight, a nonprofit that provides overflights to educate and advocate for the environment.
•
#NoMineExpansion by @ecoflight

447

25

17 days ago

🚨 Our partners are suing over the approval of the Hermosa zinc-manganese mine.

The @centerforbiodiv and @patagoniaalliance filed a 60-day Notice of Intent to Sue federal officials under the Endangered Species Act over South32’s Hermosa Minerals Project.

From above, you can see exactly what’s at stake — critical habitat for jaguars, ocelots, Mexican spotted owls, yellow-billed cuckoos, northern Mexican gartersnakes, and rare plant and aquatic species.

Our partners argue the federal review fails the Endangered Species Act and best available science, citing inadequate groundwater analysis and reliance on mitigation measures for the mine that haven’t even been developed yet. by @ecoflight

121

3

18 days ago

🌲 One week left to comment on the Roadless Rule Rescission!!

The 2001 Roadless Rule protects nearly 58.5 million acres of national forest — clean water, wildlife habitat, and some of the last truly wild backcountry in America.

The proposal to rescind it would open these lands to road-building, logging, and industrial development.

These wild places don’t get a vote — we do. The comment period closes in one week. Submit a comment (link in bio) while there’s still time. 🏔️ by @ecoflight

2

0

20 days ago

Happy National Public Lands Day! 🍂🏔️

From our home base at the Aspen Airport, some of the most remarkable public lands in the West are just minutes away by air. They’re the landscapes we fly most often, and the ones that remind us every day what’s worth protecting. Swipe to meet a few of our neighbors:

🦌 Thompson Divide, where elk and mule deer habitat, ranching, hunting, and recreation all depend on intact public land. The CORE Act would protect it permanently from new oil and gas leasing.

🏔️ Geneva Lake in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, near the headwaters of the free-flowing Crystal River

⛷️ Aspen Mountain, where much of our valley’s recreation economy runs on National Forest land

💧 Grizzly Lake below Grizzly Peak in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, where high alpine snowmelt feeds the Roaring Fork.

🏡 Carbondale, framed by public land on both sides: Red Hill in front, Mount Sopris behind, and in between, the Crystal River joining the Roaring Fork on its way to the Colorado

🌲 The Roan Plateau, where the public lands on top remain undrilled while the private lands around them do not. A December lease sale now puts that protection at risk, and we’re watching closely.

These are the ancestral homelands of the Ute people, and today they belong to all of us. They give us clean water, wildlife habitat, places to play, and the local economies that depend on them. They also face real pressure, from proposals to sell off public lands to deep cuts for the agencies that care for them.

Get outside and enjoy them this weekend. Then speak up for them: tell your members of Congress that public lands should stay in public hands, and that Colorado’s are worth protecting for good. 🛩️

#NationalPublicLandsDay #PublicLands #KeepPublicLandsInPublicHands #ColoradoPublicLands #ConservationAviation YourEyeInTheSky by @ecoflight

81

0

23 days ago

From a few thousand feet above Truckee and Tahoe, the roadless country still reads as country: granite, snow, forest, and the headwaters that feed the lake.

On September 15, Sierra Nevada Alliance organized an EcoFlight out of Truckee Tahoe Airport so partners and neighbors who work, play, and advocate on these lands could see them as one landscape. We flew inventoried roadless areas from Castle Peak and Granite Chief to Tahoe's West Shore and the high country above South Lake. Places people ski, climb, ride, run, and fish. Places that help keep Tahoe clear.

The 2001 Roadless Rule is what has limited new road building and industrial logging on these landscapes while still allowing recreation, existing access, fuels work, and Tribal uses. The Forest Service has proposed rescinding that rule. Public comments on the proposal and draft environmental study are open through October 6.

These acres are not an abstraction. They are the backcountry behind town, the tributaries that protect lake clarity, the quiet between trailheads. If you care about this map, this is the window to say so.

We’ve put every way you can support these forests on our website: comment scripts, talking points, maps, ideas for sharing with friends and partners, and more. You can find it in our Link in bio.

In the plane with us:
@ecoflight Conservation pilots
@tommycaldwell alpinist and climber
Brennan Lagasse @stateofthebackcountry who documents and organizes around backcountry skiing
@keeptahoeblue the League to Save Lake Tahoe, fighting for lake clarity and the watersheds that feed it
@trpa_tahoe the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, charged with protecting the Basin
@troutunlimitedca working to protect cold water fish and the waters they need
@dillon.osleger public lands advocate
@alpenglowsports the Tahoe City shop that outfits the people who actually use this country
#RoadlessRule #Tahoe #Truckee #SierraNevada #PublicLands #KeepTahoeBlue by @ecoflight

597

14

25 days ago

Hyperscale data center facilities are rising fast across the Pacific Northwest. Research shows river warming of up to 2.5°C downstream, adding heat to a system already strained for salmon and the communities who depend on them.

We’re flying this corridor with @columbiariverkeeper @nationalwildlife @columbiasnakeriver @americanrivers and the press!

Rising water temperatures and heavy water withdrawals threaten salmon and Tribal communities — and we’re advocating for real regulatory safeguards before more of these decisions are made. by @ecoflight

16

0

a month ago