SouthWings!
“In the distant past, kings had shown the world that they meant it by strapping on a sword and riding into war, putting their lives on the line. Getting behind the controls of a plane . . . was as close as one could reasonably come in the modern world to the same public blood oath.”
— Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock
Neal Stephenson’s recent climate techno-thriller, Termination Shock, opens with a Texan trying to save the environment by building the world’s biggest gun and launching pallets of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to cool the earth. My own recent foray into environmental conservation includes launching but is slightly less ambitious: flying for environmental conservation non-profit SouthWings.
Founded in 1996, SouthWings “partners with conservation groups, community groups, media, and decision-makers to provide a unique perspective to better understand and solve pressing environmental issues in the Southeast.” It does so by inviting its growing stable of volunteer pilots to fly monitoring and survey flights, flights of persuasion, and media flights in areas of environmental interest. In one of its best (pre-pandemic) years, 50 SouthWings volunteer pilots flew 170 conservation flights to educate 74 nonprofit organizations, 31 media organizations, 19 government officials, and 13 educational institutions, to benefit more than 70 nonprofit conservation partners. These flights — and the photos, data and experiences from them — resulted in more than 130 media pieces.
I first heard about SouthWings from Ted Auch, with whom I’d flown for another excellent conservation organization, LightHawk. As I told Ted, I live in Houston, the self-proclaimed Energy Capital of the World, and it’s nice to do a little to try to help make sure that Houston holds that title responsibly. Helping SouthWings and its partners serves that goal. In March 2022, after a short interview process, I joined SouthWings as its first Texas-based volunteer pilot.
My first flight for SouthWings, in May 2022, originated with the non-profit Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and was designed to help some accomplished journalists capture aerial views of both the gas export buildout south of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and view the still-extensive damage in the area from Hurricanes Laura and Delta.
I met the group — which included journalists from Floodlight News, E & E News, and others — at Louisiana’s Southland Field, UXL (where I’d landed once before under more amusing circumstances), just west of Lake Charles, where we made final preparations for the flight, including strapping a GoPro to the plane’s tail. After taking off and making a quick detour to the north of Lake Charles, we flew down the west coast of Calcasieu Lake to Cameron Parish on the Gulf coast, surveying the developing petrochemical infrastructure — mostly LNG export facilities — along the way. After the hour-long flight, I loaded up a second group for the same tour.
Some of the group are still compiling their final work product, but Mike Lee of E & E News just published an excellent article on the potential environmental impact of LNG infrastructure development on western Louisiana, complete with photos he took on our flight. The article’s here: U.S. LNG Surge May Have a Flood Problem. T’was nice of him to pick a title photo that included a photobomb by our wingtip….
More recently, on short notice, SouthWings organized a flight for environmental nonprofit Healthy Gulf to examine the Freeport LNG export terminal after the recent explosion in the terminal’s liquefaction delivery system. For 25 years, Healthy Gulf’s mission has been to support coastal communities as they adapt to climate change, conserve Gulf resources, hold the petrochemical industry accountable for transgressions, and protect clean water. Healthy Gulf’s staff scientist Naomi Yoder and I flew from Houston Southwest Airport (AXH) down to Freeport, with Naomi clicking away on an impressive camera on loan from the Sierra Club. Naomi’s trained as a marine ecologist and geographer — not a photographer — but you wouldn’t know it from the quality of Naomi’s photos. Here’s a sampling, courtesy of Healthy Gulf and SouthWings. The whole album’s available here.
I took a few photos, but was mostly busy trying to get the plane in the right spot, with the sun in the right spot, with the clouds in the right spot, so Naomi’s photos would turn out better.
I expect Naomi and Healthy Gulf will put the results of our flight to good use over the coming months….
There are some environmental activists that I believe go too far, all but advocating a return to the stone age. I haven’t encountered any of those in my conservation flights. On the contrary, the folks I’ve worked with at SouthWings and LightHawk have been intelligent, rational advocates seeking to help enforce existing environmental laws, establish new policies that charge industry with the true costs of development, and, in particular, preserve the Gulf Coast environment for future generations. I’m looking forward to continuing to help them.
