"Airport's aim: Say 'bye-bye' to the birdies"

Friday, August 22, 2003

Airport's aim: Say 'bye-bye' to the birdies
By Mark Larson
The Sacramento (CA) Business Journal


Keeping big birds away from Sacramento International's airliners requires
much more than firing off an air cannon now and then.

Just ask Chris Martin, the first wildlife coordinator for the Sacramento
County Airport System. Or Patrick Smith, wildlife biologist for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, who works at the airport with him.

They have to prevent migrating birds, especially big ones like geese and
tundra swans, from getting sucked into jet engines or smacking into
windshields and raising the risk of a plane crash. But the law obliges the
two men to protect the habitat of migratory birds -- no small thing when
Sacramento International sits under the Pacific Flyway, the West Coast
migration path between Canada and Mexico.

To do their job, the pair are using a growing set of tools -- ranging from
old standbys like noisemakers to scare off birds, to wildlife-management
reviews launched by the airport system this year, to a habitat management
plan that should be one of the main accomplishments of a recently launched
two-year study.

Up to 38,000 large birds have been counted flying over the airport in
December, a big travel month for people and birds alike.

"There's not any one silver bullet that can take care of all your problems,"
Martin says. "We're constantly evaluating and we have to be adaptive."

Martin, who was hired in December as the airport's first wildlife
coordinator, is part of a multi-tiered effort by the airport system to do
the right thing for wildlife affected by its growth plans over the next 20
years. Those plans include another runway, another terminal and parking
garage, light-rail service and other projects.

In May 2002 the airport hired Greg Rowe, its first environmental analyst, to
keep up on federal and state regulations to advise what must be done for
airport projects to satisfy environmental protections.

And the airport just picked an environmental consulting firm, San
Francisco-based Edaw Inc., to do the two-year study. It will take a habitat
inventory of the 5,400 acres owned by the airport, assemble a management
plan on the best uses of outlying agricultural land owned by the airport,
determine which airport expansions will require mitigation measures for
displaced species, and recommend responses.

Martin and Smith also have to look out for the well-being of the Swainson's
hawk, burrowing owls, the tricolor blackbird, the northwest pond turtle, the
giant garter snake and the elderberry beetle, to name a few protected
species at or near the airport.

Five strikes per 10,000 flights: Pilots are now being asked to report all
bird strikes to a new hotline at the airport -- all strikes, big or small,
to help biologists get a more detailed picture of the problems and when and
where they're most likely to occur.

The reporting hasn't been as vigilant as it could be, Martin says, because
most strikes cause no damage.

International currently records five bird strikes per 10,000 flights. None
has killed any people and most don't make the news.

But last year a Delta Airlines jet hit a heron on takeoff, Martin says,
forcing it to shut down an engine -- one of the biggest worries from a bird
strike. The crew turned the jet around and landed safely.

The Federal Aviation Administration has recorded 45,000 bird strikes on
airliners nationwide since 1990, Martin says.

"The bird strike issue in the past 10 to 13 years has really grown," Smith
adds.

Last October, Sacramento International helped sponsor a symposium discussing
wildlife issues at airports. It attracted 400 people from 26 countries. Next
week he and Martin will travel to Toronto to attend the now-annual meeting
on these issues.

Between 1991 and 1997, wildlife strikes cost U.S. civil aviation more than
$300 million and 500,000 hours of aircraft downtime per year. Civil aircraft
report about 2,400 bird strikes per year; the Air Force reports more than
2,500. Researchers and the FAA believe about 80 percent of wildlife strikes
aren't reported.

Tree removal 'a PR nightmare': About 18 months ago, to meet new federal
security measures, workers at International removed some trees along the
fence on the east side of the airport. It was done to remove a possible
hiding place for anyone breaking into the grounds. Other trees with
undermined roots were also taken out.

The Friends of the Swainson's Hawk objected, saying the protected birds had
used the trees for nests and perches to scan for prey.

Frances Sherertz, assistant airports director, says the complaint prompted
the airport to set up new procedures to review proposed actions that could
destroy habitats of protected species.

Now, any changes involving bushes, shrubs, tree prunings, or any landscape
changes are checked with the wildlife staff first, which photographs the
plant life to theoretically show that no critters' homes are getting
destroyed.

"We've got a much better process in place," Sherertz says. "It's an attitude
of stewardship as opposed to just doing a job. It's a very delicate
balance."

Cliff Hawley, who counts bird life in the Natomas Basin every Christmas,
called the tree-cutting "a PR nightmare."

"They called it a mistake," he says. "I'm skeptical, but I'll accept that."

Keeping up with the law: Analyst Rowe tracks environmental regs and makes
sure development moves at the airports -- big and small -- don't run afoul
of them. With four airports in the county system, "we're now recognizing
this takes more than one person," he says. The system wants to hire an
assistant in October.

His latest recommendation shows a big contrast to the tree-cutting flap.
Landscaping to be done near a row of trees along the airport entrance was
put off until a wildlife biologist could verify that the trees near the
planned landscaping weren't still home to Swainson's hawks. If they were,
Rowe says, the landscaping underneath would have been put off until autumn
so the work wouldn't scare off the birds.

In another case, Martin helped move nests of burrowing owls on the site of a
planned new hangar at Executive Airport. He says the owls, which don't
threaten planes but are considered close to being listed as a threatened
species, were moved to new burrows at another site at the airport. The same
was done for burrowing owls with nests in the way of a new fuel farm at
International, Rowe says.

For the big picture, Rowe and many other staffers put out a request for
qualifications to hire an environmental consulting firm to count the
wildlife species at Sacramento International and recommend ways to
accommodate them as the airport grows.

The staff chose Edaw, and the consultant's two-to-three-year work plan is
expected to be put before the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors in
October.

The report is expected to show how to start habitat restoration projects on
airport property before planned projects on the airport displace wildlife.
The study will begin with International airport, said Rowe, but will likely
be done next at Mather Airport, the system's air cargo hub.

Helping habitat while cutting down on the chances of bird strikes, Rowe
says, is a balancing act. For instance, wetlands habitat created for the
giant garter snake must not also attract waterfowl into the airport's
five-mile, low-altitude approaches.

"You don't want large wetlands for ducks and geese to congregate," he says.
"You have to figure out how to strike that balance."

Fewer birds last December: Christmas bird counter Hawley wonders why the
airport was built where it is, next to the Sacramento River in one of the
foggiest areas of the region and right in line with a major migratory bird
path.

The problem isn't so much keeping the birds from hanging out on airport
property with noisemakers, he says. The problem lies in the tens of
thousands of geese and ducks -- big birds -- that fly over it annually from
late October through March.

In December 2000, Hawley counted 30,000 geese flying directly over the
airport, along with several hundred ducks -- pintails and mallards -- and
another 7,000 tundra swans. They're big birds, he says, "like turkeys that
fly."

Geese settling in from Canada for the winter, he says, fly over the airport
daily, usually in the morning and the evening when making routine feeding
rounds.

Those numbers were down last December, he says, because the warmer weather
lured fewer birds this far south.

Save from moving the airport, which won't happen, "There's nothing they can
do about it," says Hawley.

Wildlife biologist Smith says he's since seen an upturn in the number of
Swainson's hawk sightings from past years. Data he helped collect at the
airport from June 2001 through June 2002 recorded 68 sightings, with some
birds probably counted several times. Smith says the Natomas Basin
Conservancy has reported an increase in Swainson's hawk nests since 1999,
and that the population appears stable.

Hawley worries about the fate of the Swainson's hawk, which he says loses
forage land with every acre carved up for new homes in the Natomas basin.
He's skeptical that developers will provide new forage areas, even though
they're supposed to. "Without feeding areas," Hawley says, "they can't
support their young."

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