EcoFlight Gives ‘Big Picture’ View of Environmental Hot Spots

Travel Blog • Joanna Kakissis • 07.11.08 | 9:21 AM ET

What’s it like seeing a panoramic view of Colorado’s Roan Plateau? With all that wild beauty, you’d think it would be a beautiful thing. But from the cockpit of an EcoFlight plane, you see its dismal fate: Rich with fossil fuels, it’s been dissected by gas fields. Bruce Gordon started the Aspen, Colorado-based company in 2002 to give people aerial tours of U.S. public land threatened by such development and environmental malfeasance.

The tours are supposed to give you a sense of what our current methods in industry and energy development are costing the natural world. Gordon flew an NBC crew over a copper smelter in Arizona that spewed so many chemicals into the atmosphere that it was suspected of causing acid rain. When the journalists saw the giant plume emanating from the smelter, they were sickened, Gordon said. “Sometimes, it is all about perspective,” he told E magazine.