Flight Across America program takes off

CMC students will once again take part in Ecoflight’s Student Program

This article was first published in the Aspen Daily News.

Snow covered Maroon Bells under airplane wing during an Ecoflight flight
Photo of a trip with Ecoflight over the Maroon Bells Wilderness in 2011. Photo by Ben Saheb, a CMC Sustainability Studies program student who took part in the program last year.

EcoFlight, an environmental nonprofit based out of Aspen, will be hosting a roundtable seminar on Monday at 5:30 p.m. to kick off its 10th annual Flight Across America Student Program. This year’s program focuses on the Upper Basin of the Colorado River.

Using flight and ground-based education, the program is designed to involve and inform college-age students about current conservation issues from a broad range of perspectives and show them through flight how such issues impact their lives and their world.

Five students studying environmental affairs from Colorado Mountain College, CU Boulder and Colorado Mesa University will accompany EcoFlight on this week of learning. It begins Monday with a roundtable conversation with Thompson Divide Coalition, Roaring Fork Conservancy, and local civic and conservation leaders, followed by a screening of the Robert Redford documentary “Watershed.” The event will take place at 465 Conundrum Road, outside of Aspen.

Flight Across America will then continue on to Grand Junction; Farmington, N.M.; Page, Ariz.; Desolation Canyon, Utah; Flaming Gorge, Wyo.; and Craig to study water conservation concerns and issues that affect the rivers: coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, and tar sands development as well as agriculture, recreation areas, and wildlife habitat in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

For more information, contact EcoFlight program director Jane Pargiter at jane@ecoflight.org or 970 429-1110 ext. 1.