Local pilot to fly wolves across country
Part of group that champions environmental causes
By Susan Morse
Pilot Tom Haas might not be flying by sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, but for four endangered Mexican wolves he’s taking cross country this week, he might as well be Santa Claus.
Haas, of Durham, is taking off from Portsmouth International Airport at Pease on Monday and heading to Manassas Regional Airport in Virginia. There, members of the National Zoo in Washington will load one male and two female wolves onto his Pilatus PC-12 for transport to a protected wildlife area outside of Albuquerque, N.M.
The six-passenger plane will carry the wolves in three individual crates, a handler from the zoo and Haas’ business partner, Janice Newman. It will make one fuel stop mid-route. Five hours later, Haas and crew will return with another Mexican wolf, an injured female that lost her pups in California wildfires and her mate to cancer.
Haas is donating his plane, the fuel and his time on his first mission for LightHawk, a nonprofit organization of American and Canadian pilots who champion environmental causes. Haas joined the board of directors this year.
“It’s just a real pleasure to help repopulate some of our endangered species,” said Haas.
Haas, who’s been flying for 34 years and is a flight instructor at Port City Air, has never transported wolves before. He’s known of other LightHawk pilots who have flown Peregrine falcons and otters to new habitats.
The Mexican wolves he’s transporting are smaller than the larger, more commonly known gray wolf, said Kelley Tucker, LightHawk’s Eastern Region program director who works near Lake Placid, N.Y.
“It was hunted almost to extinction,” Tucker said of the Mexican wolf. “There were a couple of handful of animals left in the U.S. and Mexico.”