Several Rifle and Glenwood Springs high school students buckled into single-engine planes and held on tight as they took to the skies for an EcoFlight aerial tour around Rifle on Wednesday.
The quick jaunts were part of the Buddy Program’s Leadership through Exploration, Action and Discovery (LEAD) Program and brought land management issues in Western Colorado to life through a bird’s-eye view of local natural gas infrastructure and conversations with experts working in oil and gas regulation.
“(Natural gas) has been a really important economic driver here in the Colorado River Valley,” Lea Linse-Hirro, EcoFlight conservation policy director, told students gathered in the Atlantic Aviation fixed-base operator at Rifle Garfield County Airport Wednesday morning. “EcoFlight and a lot of our partners, we want to make sure that other values are also being considered when we make decisions about where and how we’re going to develop these minerals.”
Founded in 2002, EcoFlight takes everyone from politicians to local students to the skies in small aircrafts, educating and advocating for watersheds, wildlands and culturally significant landscapes using the broad, aerial view as a point of connection and conversation.
EcoFlight Founder Bruce Gordon was a Big Buddy with the Buddy Program for several years. Now, the two organizations’ long-standing partnership has given around 150 students an aerial perspective of environmental issues and a unique opportunity to fly in a single-engine Cessna 210.
”The students learn a lot about public land management and it’s really important for them to step outside the classroom and really see it from above,” Jennifer Balmes, Buddy Program marketing and communications manager, said. “The fact that EcoFlight is able to support us in that way and have a collaboration with us for many years has been really crucial to the program and to the youth. Some of these kids have not seen from above. Some of them haven’t been on airplanes before. For them to see what they’re learning in the classroom from above is really special for them.”
Linse-Hirro participated in an EcoFlight as a high school student in Carbondale before working for the 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
“ This is kind of the area that I flew over. The thing about the Colorado River Valley flight, when you’re down here in the valley or even on one of these plateaus, it’s pretty flat. You can see the mountains around you but you can’t really see what is going on in the landscape,” Linse-Hirro said. “Being in an airplane is a really cool way to see what’s going on around you, see all the different ways that people are using this landscape for different industries like natural gas or farming and agriculture.”
The Wednesday morning aerial tour marked the first time flying for Xiadani Bello, a junior at Glenwood Springs High School. Currently in her first year of the LEAD Program, which offers experiential mentoring for high school teens through a dual-credit outdoor leadership class, she said EcoFlight is her favorite experience with the program so far.
“I loved seeing the view of the valley. I’m not really from Rifle, but it was still really cool. All the mountains, and seeing all the free space like the farms and stuff, that was really cool,” Bello said after the flight. “…It was a first time experience for me and it was just a really cool experience in general.”