February 2008, Issue 14

LightHawk's monthly update, WayPoint, was created to share some of the good news we on staff learn about daily. These success stories illustrate the critical role we play in conservation efforts throughout North and Central America through the unique perspective of flight. We hope you enjoy WayPoint and will share with others our success stories from above.

Rare and biologically valuable unfragmented forest in Wild River IRA in the White Mountain National Forest. George Wuerthner/LightHawk

uplands are about the only place there are large forest blocks with relatively few roads. The fringes of these areas, the lower elevation slopes, are just that much more in need of protection from the nibbling and gnawing of the timber industry and other heavy human activity.” She added that the White Mountain National Forest is “an archipelago of relatively undisturbed forest and mountain habitat in a sea of fragmentation.”

LightHawk’s unique aerial perspective is an important tool in defending against creeping fragmentation in the White Mountains. Photos taken during LightHawk flights are being used to challenge the proposed timber sales, to gauge and catalog the range of their effects, and to portray the destruction of this hard-won wilderness. From above, the cumulative impact of recent logging and development throughout the region is compelling and absolutely undeniable. Fortunately, LightHawk flights allow a wider view that our partners hope to build upon – a vision of reconnecting the forests of the northeast.

Inventoried roadless areas (IRAs) are, by federal definition, sufficiently intact to be candidates for wilderness designation. Indeed, 23,700 acres of the Wild River IRA was designated wilderness – where logging is prohibited – as part of the New England Wilderness Act of 2006. LightHawk flights played an important role in that conservation success story. LightHawk is committed to the protection of the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Maine and the Green Mountains that extend from Vermont into Canada. Beyond their beauty and the value of their unique ecology, they are important links in the chain of northern temperate forest that stretch from Nova Scotia through the Maine North Woods and southern Canada, west to the Adirondacks and the Tug Hill Plateau. LightHawk is exploring opportunities to reconnect these forest oases for the benefit of wildlife and ecosystem health.