Word: lighthawk
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Dates: during 1988-1988
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...other hand, if you want to see what is really happening, get in touch with Michael Stewartt, the chief pilot, troublemaker, idea man and fund raiser of an extraordinary environmental flying service called Project Lighthawk. Just now a couple of local environmentalists, a journalist and Stewartt are aboard one of Lighthawk's two Cessna 210s. Stewartt, a lean, relaxed fellow of 38, with a bushy light brown mustache and hair to match, radios his plane's identification to the control tower at Seattle's Boeing Field...
...have no grudge against wealth or business," he says these days. But around 1975 he had an idea: "It would help if more people could get a pilot's view of the damage that was being done." He spent most of the next four years trying to get Lighthawk started...
...conversation goes on one of Project Lighthawk's flights this summer. The nine-year-old, nonprofit flying service, which operates on a budget of about $200,000 a year, has tracked radio-collared wolves in Montana and rare porpoises in the Sea of Cortes. Last winter Stewartt and Volunteer Pilot Jerry Hoogerwerf flew for several weeks over the Costa Rican rain forest and discovered and helped stop illegal gold mining and logging near a park on the Osa Peninsula...
...typical Saturday a few weeks ago, Lighthawk had four planes in the air -- the two Cessnas it owns, the second flown by Staff Pilot Bruce Gordon, and two planes supplied by volunteer pilots -- over endangered areas in four Western states. The charge to journalists, biologists, legislators and environmental groups ranges from nothing to $40 an hour...
...first Stewartt had a tough job explaining to earthbound environmentalists how Lighthawk might be useful. That changed after a successful four-year fight that led to the shutdown of the smoke-belching Phelps Dodge copper smelter at Douglas, Ariz., a notorious contributor to the West's airborne sulphur-dioxide levels. Now Stewartt, with five salaries to guarantee, two planes to maintain and the costly prospect of buying three more, spends half his time raising money. He has no house, no wife and lives out of a flight...