Partnerships and Participation
Southern Company participates in many environmental stewardship programs to protect wildlife and conserve natural resources. These partnerships foster environmental improvements to ensure that the Southeast continues to be a healthy and desirable place to live. Partnerships include funding, but Southern Company employees will also roll up their sleeves to pitch in.
Power of Flight
The Power of Flight program is a partnership between Southern Company—including its four operating companies—and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The partnership funds efforts to conserve birds characteristic of the southern U.S. through strategic habitat restoration and environmental education. Efforts span Southern Company's primary service area of Georgia, Alabama, northwestern Florida, and southeastern Mississippi.
Launched in 2003, the 10-year partnership is the largest public agency-private corporation funding effort for bird conservation in the South. Each partner contributes $300,000 annually with the combined $600,000 available through a competitive grant program. Grantees match all awards dollar for dollar (or more). In addition, Southern Company provides $60,000 annually to support the NFWF bird conservation efforts.
Fact Sheet (PDF 110KB) | More about NFWF | How to apply
Funding Priorities
- Addressing conservation needs of southern U.S. bird species, including habitat restoration and species management
- Implementation of environmental education projects, particularly those targeting urban youth
- Other collaborative conservation actions, including applied conservation research
Accomplishments
- Awarded 54 grants to 31 different conservation organizations and agencies
- Granted more than $3 million; with matching funds total on the ground impact of $9 million
- More than 134,000 acres have benefitted from restoration or improved management*
- Disseminated education messages to more than 1.5 million people*
*Figures are approximate and include completed and anticipated results, estimated for funded projects through 2008. Education messages include displays and materials placed in nature centers and other facilities that received more than one million visitors annually.
2008 Grantees and Focus
- Operation Migration USA - Whooping crane migration effort (3 years)
- Milliken Forestry Company - Red-cockaded woodpecker translocation effort (5 years; continuation of FWS project)
- Atlanta Audubon Society - Important Bird Area (IBA) conservation for American oystercatchers, red knots, and loggerhead shrikes
- Tall Timbers Research Station - Updated Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative plan and conducted landowner workshops
Whooping Cranes
In a new alliance that extends efforts to restore bird populations in the Southeast, Southern Company is sponsoring Operation Migration USA with a Power of Flight grant. The support will help Operation Migration increase the number of whooping cranes it raises and leads south by ultralight aircraft from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin to the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida.
The cranes are first taught to follow a specially designed ultralight aircraft. Eventually, they follow a team of four ultralight aircraft on their first migration from Wisconsin to Florida. Once the birds learn the migratory route they can return, on their own, the following spring. Each year a new generation is taught this route and released. Once this flock reaches 125 birds, including 25 breeding pairs, it can be considered self-sustaining.
Primarily due to destruction of natural habitat only 15 birds survived in the world in the 1940s. Thanks to conservation efforts like Operation Migration, more than 500 whooping cranes survive today.
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