I’m in a small Cessna Centurion 2-10, a six-seater plane, flying southeast over the San Pedro River.
Our pilot Bruce Gordon is the founder of EcoFlight. He’s flying our group toward the proposed Copper Creek Exploratory Mine Project near Mammoth, Arizona, in Pinal County. The proposed copper mine is adjacent to the Galiuro Mountains and close to a sky island of the Madrean Archipelago– a rugged and remote biodiversity hotspot with more than 7,000 species of plants and animals including black bears, coatis, and Mexican owls.
This area encompasses 55 mountain islands surrounded by desert and grassland seas.
On our way southeast, I see the SunZia Transmission Line below us. Another big project carving its way through the Sky Islands that is designed to carry wind and solar power from New Mexico, through Arizona to California.