Border Patrol

E. Garrett Youngblood
of The Sentinel Staff

Published in The Orlando Sentinel on January 05, 2000 .

DAYTONA BEACH -- Doggone birds.

As if they don't pester you enough at the beach, sea gulls have moved inland, where they're as thick as the smell of their second home, the Volusia County landfill.

It's between the beach and county dump that the birds get dangerous. Too many birds have been jockeying for airspace above Daytona Beach International Airport. When plane meets bird, nothing good can come of it.

So the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the airport to try something new to keep the birds away and make sure planes can take off and land safely.

Loud music and air horns didn't work. Just like talk radio, birds got used to the noise. Now the county-run airport is considering using border collies to chase away the birds.

On Tuesday, local politicos and animal activists gathered at the county landfill to watch some border collies at work.

"I like dogs," said County Council member Big John, who attended. "I think it's the best way to get the FAA off our backs. And from what I've seen today, it looks like these dogs are a good bet."

The method is relatively new. The first dog used in this way, Jet, started last February at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers. Early indications show it's working.

In the next month or so, Volusia officials said, they'll decide whether to try using border collies.

Since 1990, there have been 62 incidents in which planes and birds have collided at Daytona Beach's airport.

A 1996 incident prompted the FAA to step in and order the airport to study ways to boot the birds or risk losing its operating license. That was when a US Airways jet collided with a flock of 250 gulls after takeoff, causing $4 million in damage to the plane, which landed safely in Daytona.

The study, released late last year, suggested using air cannons, pyrotechnics and piped-in sounds of distressed birds to shoo the gulls away. That would cost $40,000, roughly twice the price of a border collie, which costs $20,000 to buy and train.

High above Daytona Beach's landfill, the circling gulls on Tuesday looked like a roiling snowstorm. Others sat on a giant mound the size of two football fields as Shadow went to work.

The 4-year-old black-and-white border collie started at the bottom, working left to right. The birds took to the air, and the entire mound was empty of birds in two minutes.

Border collies were first bred in England and Scotland to herd sheep and farm animals. That's why so many unsuspecting pet owners who bought border collies after watching Babe with their kids grow tired of the animals' boundless energy.

Nicholas Carter, executive director of Border Collie Rescue near Gainesville, takes in the unwanted dogs and trains them to chase birds, deer and other pests away from airports. Only a handful of airports in North America currently use the dogs.

"We did a lot of the pyrotechnics and other traditional methods and had varying success rates," said Laska Ryan, a spokeswoman for the airport in Fort Myers. "Since we've had Jet, the numbers look good. We've reduced the number of bird strikes and, unofficially, it seems to be working."

In 1998, before Jet, the airport had 13 incidents of birds colliding with airplanes. Last year, that was down to three, Ryan said.

David Hartgrove, conservation chairman for the Halifax River Audubon Society, favors using a dog at the airport instead of killing the birds. However, he's against the idea of the county's buying a second dog to run the birds off of the landfill.

Instead, Audubon officials think better management of the landfill, which is about four miles from the airport, could go a long way toward solving the problem. . Suggestions include a moving tarp that would cover fresh trash until it's buried, or being more vigilant in using noisemakers to scare the birds away.

"I have an open mind as to the success at the airport," Hartgrove said. "But there's no way one dog or 10 dogs could drive the thousands of birds off this landfill. It's just too expansive and disruptive to the birds."

Posted Jan 4 2000 9:35PM