Patty Wagstaff’s incredible flying exploits are well-known to millions of fans, but less well-known is how Patty spends her off-season — for the last six years, she has spent the winter in Africa, training park wardens in Kenya, so they can fly air patrols to deter poachers. Under Patty’s instruction, the accident rate of the patrol pilots has declined by more than 50 percent, and elephant populations have increased more than 25 percent. On Thursday, Lindbergh Foundation President Knox Bridges announced that the foundation will partner up with Patty as a fundraiser for that project. “The work Patty is doing is in perfect harmony with the Foundation’s mission of balancing technology and the environment,” Bridges said. “Anti-poaching pilots need to fly low, slow, and with precision, and who better to teach them those techniques than Patty Wagstaff.”
The Foundation also announced that a Lindbergh-Lycoming grant will go to Ganesh Raman, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, to study the use of high-frequency sound waves to reduce noise from aircraft engines. The $10,580 grant represents the cost of building Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis airplane. Applications for 2009 grants will be accepted through Oct. 30. For more information, visit The Lindbergh Foundation Web site.
