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Drunk birds give airport trouble |
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Tuesday, 25 July 2006 |
Drunk birds give airport trouble “There were these little birds that kept flying around and acting crazy. They were flying all over the entrance road and disturbing people as they drove into the airport,” said Ken Martin, environmental compliance manager for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. He explained that the cedar waxwing birds were causing all sort of problems. “Sometimes you could walk up thinking one of these birds was dead. Then you got to it would be alive and fly off.” After some research, the airport was able to safely find out the problem. “What we found was that these birds love a certain type of berry and they would get drunk from them. So what we did is cut back on those bushes a great deal and haven’t had any trouble since.”
This is just one example of how wildlife is dealt with at the airport. Martin said, “The goal is to scare the animals away from the airport because they interfere with safety. We don’t use lethal methods, we usually look at changing the habitat in the area so animals are not attracted to the airport.”
Travis Byers, operations supervisor for Hartsfield-Jackson, said that most of the wildlife in the area consists of birds such as sterlings, doves, redtail hawks, and some pigeons. Byers said the Airport Operations Division mostly keeps animals away by making the land unattractive. “We don’t want a lot of standing water on the premises because birds look for that. If we have a retention pond we try to drain it quickly.” Martin said that often when standing water is on the property, it is filled with weeds. “They avoid water with weeds because there it would easy for predators to hide.”
Byers said that things such as fake owls are put at the end of each runway to scare off rodents and other birds. Also, sound cannons are placed around the airport. “It sounds out different bird signals, such as a predator call or a distress signal and helps scares them away.” He added that animals will get used to the signals, so the cannons are moved around frequently.
Byers said that things such as grass are also considered. “We look at what types of birds fly through here and what types of grass they like and don’t like. There are certain heights that the grass needs to be to keep birds away.” He said that because of the wildlife in the region, Hartsfield-Jackson keeps its grass around six inches.
According to Byers, these precautionary measures have kept the numbers of animal related accidents relatively low. “It is pretty rare that I hear of animals that cause problems.” When asked what the most unusual animal he has dealt with at Hartsfield-Jackson, Byers said, “We had a fox come in here once. Eventually, we hired animal control to bait and trap him.” Byers said the animal was taken away and put back in his natural habitat. |
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