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May 29, 2000, 6:28PM Digging up answer to bird strike issueBy JIM BARLOWBirds and airplanes don't play together well. Collisions between the two happen about 2,500 times a year. Since 1991, they have caused about $48 million in damage, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. It's why the National Aeronautics and Space Administration keeps a powerful air gun on hand. It's used to test the windows of new jetliners. The gun shoots a large, dead bird at the cockpit windshield to see if it can withstand the impact. You might have heard the urban legend about how the English borrowed the gun to test for bird strikes on the windshield of the new, high-speed train which goes under the English Channel. It was a spectacular failure. The turkey they used not only went through the windshield but through the seat where the engineer would have been sitting. Turns out they used a frozen turkey instead of a fresh, dead one. Except it isn't an urban legend. It actually happened. About 85 percent of the bird strikes occur around airports. That's not surprising. There are not likely to be strikes at the normal cruising altitudes for jets. Airports have tried everything to discourage birds. They shoot them, spread chemicals, set off firecrackers and sound sirens. At England's Gloucestershire airport, they found that playing Tina Turner records over a sound system worked much better than recordings of bird distress calls.
Man's best friend on patrolNow we're seeing a few airports use dogs. It started at Southwest Florida International Airport near Fort Myers. The airport is near the sea and in a rural area. Its 5.5 square miles are surrounded by fences. Natural predators have a tough time getting in. Without meaning to, the airport created a bird sanctuary. Dr. Nick Carter of Border Collie Rescue of Melrose, Fla., thought of a solution. His nonprofit institution tries to find good homes for border collies. The dogs have a natural herding instinct. They can be trained to respond to whistles and verbal commands to guide birds away from runways rather than just run and scatter them. Carter got in touch with the airport, which paid the shelter $6,000 for a 35-pound dog named Jet. That also paid for the training of the dog and his 12 airport handlers, operations people and members of the fire rescue team. And it worked. A study by an ecologist hired by the airport found after Jet started work in 1999, the overall number of bird species at the airport dropped. The population of the most common birds -- sandhill crane, egrets and herons -- dropped by half. Kevin Erwin, the ecologist, said these wading birds were very responsive to harassment by the dog, who does not otherwise harm them. Jet works twice a day, in the early and evening hours when air traffic is less. He is trained to immediately crouch and hold in place if his handler sees him moving toward an occupied runway or taxiway. In the first year the airport used Jet, bird strikes dropped to four from 16 the previous year. During April of last year when Jet was sidelined with an injury, the number of bird strikes jumped.
Success has its rewardsJet's accomplishments have put Carter's Border Collies in demand. He has since placed bird-herding dogs at Augusta Regional Airport in Georgia, Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and Vancouver International Airport in Canada. When I called his Florida headquarters, he was away installing dogs at Cold Lake Air Force Base in Alberta, Canada. In addition to the herding activities, Carter also trains border collies to continually range through bird nesting areas inside airports. The birds soon figure out it's not safe to live there and move on. But unless the dog continues to work every day, they soon come back. Of course the best course might be to not put airports where there are lots of birds. Houston's Bush Intercontinental and Hobby airports have not had bird strike problems -- according to airport officials and the FAA -- but you may recall that one of the criticisms of the proposed -- and later abandoned -- West side airport in Houston was that it would have been in an area full of migratory ducks and geese. Still, airports must go somewhere. And harassment is better than shooting the birds. And much better than being on a jet airplane that ingests a large bird in an engine on takeoff.
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