Flying for the Environment

Tuesday, 09 March 2010 10:33

After spending a life-altering year in Mexico, Lanham decided to combine her passion for flying airplanes and her immense interest in marine life and desert habitat to single-handedly start the non-profit organization Environmental Flying Services.

“It all seemed so reasonable during the day when I thought that I could do it, but it was at three o’clock in the morning when I would wake up and ask myself, ‘Are you out of your mind?’," Lanham said. “But it has worked.  Now I can hardly imagine what I once did. I’m fortunate that my dream did become a reality, but it wasn’t easy.”

Twenty years ago, Lanham’s good friend promised her that if she moved to Mexico, her life would change significantly. It “absolutely did,” she said fervently, but she couldn’t have predicted that her experiences in Mexico would eventually help to optimize the work of many Mexican researchers and biologists and alter the fate of countless species of animals. 

During the year that Lanham lived in Mexico she noticed the lack of environmental aviation services for researchers. There were plenty of surveyors who watched from the sidelines while more and more species became endangered, she said, and her decision to fix the problem was effortless.

“I made the decision in an instant,” Lanham said. “During a flight with a Mexican biologist, when I saw his dedication, I wanted the same for me.”

When she founded the organization in 1991, Lanham already owned a 1956 Cessna 182, which she has since traded in for a 1958 model of the four-place plane. They are ideal for the “low and slow” flying that she does for environmental surveys with researchers.

Lanham bought the antique 1956 model when she and her daughter, Alexis, flew around the country in 1987.

“I couldn’t part with it after the trip,” she said. But fifteen years ago, Lanham was forced to retire her beloved aircraft when the salt water from her low flights eventually corroded the body of the plane.

She sometimes flies less than 200 feet from the ground or the water, and Lanham compared the experience of flying at such a low height to “floating above a painting,” or sitting in a balcony seat at a showing of “the greatest film ever made.”

The beauty of her craft and the success stories of species discoveries that she witnesses constantly remind Lanham of her talent and good fortune, but there are also exhausting days of flying for over eight hours, inches of paperwork for each flight, and significant fund raising that is necessary for her operation to work as smoothly as it does.

Fund raising is the hardest part for Lanham, but it is necessary because her trips are costly and she receives no money from the U.S. or Mexican governments.

The estimated cost for each hour of flying is $150, but Lanham said she also pays about $15,000 per year on maintenance and storage at the Tucson International Airport.  Lanham and the researchers she works with receive funding from companies, foundations and individuals such as the Fund for Wild Nature, Norcross Wildlife Foundation, and the Patagonia Foundation.

To save some money, Lanham fills up on fuel in Mexico because it is significantly cheaper there, but she can only get it at certain airports.

“Aviation fuel [in Mexico] is a more controlled substance than cocaine,” she said. “You can’t buy it at small, private airports.”

The recession has also hurt her business, and the number of hours she is spending in the air has decreased over the past few years, but Lanham's unique service is still in high demand.

It has been nearly 20 years from the day she launched her organization and Lanham is as busy as any major airline pilot, logging anywhere from 400 to 600 hours per year. She explained that there are some U.S.-based environmental aviation groups, such as LightHawk, who will fly down to southern Mexico on occasion, but Environmental Flying Services is the only full-time operation that rarely limits its destinations. She flies over the Gulf of California, the Pacific Coast, and numerous states in Mexico.

“That’s why I am so popular,” Lanham said as she laughed and sipped her coffee.

Lanham does, however, have specific criteria for her passengers and their intentions.

She will only fly researchers or biologists from Mexico, or Americans working collaboratively with Mexican natives. She will not fly passengers who want to sight see or those traveling from one city in Mexico to another.

Lanham strictly enforces her guidelines because she wants to provide her service for those who have no other option. Nearly every state in the U.S. has an environmental aviation service, she said, so she refuses to fly Americans who are not working with people from Mexico. 

Since Lanham founded the one-woman operation, she has worked with thousands of Mexican researchers from government agencies, universities and non-profit organizations seeking to protect natural habitat.

Once the Mexican government institutes their own department of natural resource flying, Lanham can retire at ease. Until then, she plans to continue doing the job which suits her perfectly, and essentially benefits researchers, the environment and thousands of species in need of attention.

Written by Jacquelyn Valerie Smith