EcoFlight ✈

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.

We’re taking a break from our Flight Across America series because Mark Harvey, our stalwart board president, was inducted into Aspen’s Hall of Fame on April 12th, 2026! Congratulations Mark, we are thrilled to celebrate this honor with you. Mark is the long-running board president of not only EcoFlight but also Aspen Journalism and received the honor of being appointed commissioner to the Colorado State Land Board in 2025 by Governor Polis. He was born in Aspen in the old hospital on Red Mountain, one of six kids. He grew up before the town was famous and, in a time when kids had to always tuck their shirts in and address their elders with Mr., Mrs., or Miss. With an insatiable need for the outdoors and sports, Mark’s passion as a youngster was ski racing, and he competed at both the national and international level, including the World Cup. Mark epitomizes the Aspen Idea, embodying athletic, artistic, cultural, and intellectual pursuits for all his adult life. For nearly a decade, he worked as a mountain guide and horsepacker for the National Outdoor Leadership School. His experiences inspired him to author The NOLS Wilderness Guide, which won the National Outdoor Book Award. He produced and directed an award-winning documentary, A Land out of Time, focusing on oil and gas impacts on our public lands in Colorado and the broader West. He started and still runs a successful shellfish farm in Chile’s Patagonia and has recently created Open Range Wines, an award-winning wine company in Colorado. He is a well-published photographer and writer, often focusing on local Colorado issues. He continues to run his family’s cattle ranch in Old Snowmass, one of the last working ranches in the valley. Mark joins EcoFlight’s founder, Bruce Gordon, in the Aspen Hall of Fame, inducted in 2022, and is proud to join his mother, Connie Harvey, who was inducted in 2006. We are grateful to Mark for his sense of humor, nuggets of wisdom, and his steady support of EcoFlight.

Flying over the Great Bend of the Gila proposed National Monument, AZ, began our second day of Flight Across America. We learned about cultural landscapes and efforts for protection of sacred landscapes and Tribal co-management of these landscapes with the Native Nations and US agencies. We flew over sites of rich history - the Great Bend of the Gila with 100,000-plus ancient drawings. We learned from Navajo water managers, Fort Yuma Quechan Councilmembers, @archaeologysouthwest , and more. And the 8 collegiate participants got to know eachother and gain from the expertise of the other participants studies and connections to these landscapes. @protectkwtsan @friendsoftheverderiver @theyavapaiapachenation @gpongyesva89

Flying across AZ’s desert terrain to mountainous Sky Islands, the Flight Across America journey was about listening, learning, and understanding the evolving role of Native Nations in protecting sacred lands. On day 1, the pilots and EcoFlight team met up with 8 college participants and a Tribal Liason who travelled with us. The group began to learn and build relationships across educational studies, backgrounds, and expereinces. We focused on Tribal led national monument proposals and designated national monuments including Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni. And we heard from a Havasupai Medicine woman, Hopi leaders, the Chairman of the Yavapai Apache Tribe Buddy Rocha Jr. and a Navajo river rafter. @grandcanyontrust @gpongyesva89 @returningrapids @friendsoftheverderiver @theyavapaiapachenation @nauflagstaff

EcoFlight recently wrapped up one of our most powerful weeks of flying ever - our 20th Anniversary Flight Across America expedition. This milestone year brought together 8 select college students from diverse backgrounds to deep-dive into aviation and explore their academic pursuits in a new way. For two decades, Flight Across America has equipped emerging leaders with the knowledge, perspective, and experience needed to tackle complex environmental challenges. This year’s program continues that legacy—elevating diverse perspectives and fostering meaningful dialogue in some of the nation’s most ecologically and culturally significant landscapes. The 2026 flight program studied the role of Native Tribes in defending and protecting sacred landscapes in the desert Southwest through activism and policy.

Students took flight with EcoFlight to see Southern Arizona’s copper mining landscape up close. Where industry, environment, and Indigenous voices collide. ✈️🏜️ From tailings ponds near Sahuarita to the Santa Rita Mountains, this aerial tour reveals the real impact behind the headlines. 🌎✈️ From the sky, the stakes look different. #tucsonspotlight #tucson #tucsonnews #arizona #ecoflight

Friends of the Amargosa Basin and partners are honored to have had the recent opportunity to participate in an @ecoflight over the Amargosa Basin! 🛩 Opportunities like this help us to truly visualize the lands that we work every day to advocate for and protect. Sometimes, it's about seeing familiar surroundings from a new perspective! 📸 Photos from Mandi Campbell

✈️🌎💚 We spent Earth Week in the skies over the Thompson Divide, CO, celebrating a wild landscape in our backyard—and spotlighting what’s at stake. Between the Roaring Fork and North Fork Valleys, these forests shelter threatened lynx, moose, elk, mountain lions, and more, while linking wild country from Grand Junction to the Elk Mountains. We flew over the Thompson Divide, just southwest of Carbondale, and focused on the sites proposed for logging and road building, where concerns remain about impacts to wildlife habitat, recreation, and whether the project has received adequate analysis. “My biggest concern is that there hasn’t been adequate analysis,” said EcoFlight’s Lea Linse-Hirro. There’s no better way to honor Earth Day than lifting up the places worth protecting. 🌲🫎 Read more @aspendailynews . Link in bio.

Happy Earth Day 🌎💚 Soar through the skies with us ✈️ over the Ragged Wilderness, CO. Today, and time and time again, we are inspired by the wild places that make our Earthly home so extraordinary. Let’s join together to protect them 🌻🌄

Happy Earth Day from the place we call home. 💕 “I urge everyone to treat every day of the year as Earth Day.” — Jane Goodall We live here. We work here. We wake up every morning next to 1.9 million acres of canyon country that belongs to all of us. This spring, we joined @protectwildutah and @ecoflight to see it from above, and honestly, it just made us love it more and want to fight harder for it. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is at risk right now. Congress is considering a resolution under the Congressional Review Act that would permanently eliminate its management plan and ban future management plans. We signed the letter opposing it alongside 44 other local businesses, and that letter made its way to Congress. We will be writing more about this experience and the latest threats on GSENM soon, but until then, get yourself outside, love this beautiful planet, and let’s continue to spread joy knowing that showing up for it matters. 📸 @ecoflight #EarthDay #GSENM #ProtectWildUtah #PublicLands #BaseCampKanab

Congress is about to vote on a bill that would dismantle the Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act has prevented the extinction of 99% of listed species. Now Congress is considering a bill that would unravel it. 😞🦉🦋🦎 The ESA Amendments Act (H.R. 1897) would delay protections for already declining species, limit the habitat that can be protected, weaken science-based decision-making, and fast-track harmful development. This is a choice: protect wildlife, or accelerate extinction. 🚨Tell your representatives to oppose this bill: LINK IN BIO

Read Addy Cowley’s reflection on our trip with @ecoflight last month (linked in bio). Thanks to our amazing partners in local media for their united effort to inform our community about the Lake. @greatsaltlakenews @amplifyutah @thechrony @sltrib #friendsofgreatsaltlake #greatsaltlake #keepthelakegreat