LAX makes birds unwelcome

Author: admin

27 Aug

Most people know them as European starlings, stout little birds that weigh no more than 4 ounces. But around the nation’s airports, they are called “bullets with wings.”

Flocks of them brought down a Lockheed Electra during takeoff in Boston in 1960 and a Belgian Air Force C-130 Hercules cargo plane in the Netherlands in 1996. Combined, the crashes killed more than 100 people.

Starlings also fly in the crowded skies above Los Angeles International Airport, a major concern of biologist Todd Pitlik, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His job is to control the wildlife populations at LAX, where more than 940 animal strikes involving commercial aircraft were reported between 1990 and 2008. About 4% of the collisions caused substantial damage to engines, wings and fuselages.

Pitlik’s work isn’t easy. LAX’s 3,500 acres just east of the Pacific Ocean contain a menagerie of birds and small mammals that inhabit the drainage ditches, trees, dunes and grassy flats that surround the four runways of the nation’s third-busiest airport.

Red foxes dash across the tarmac. Kestrels hover along the final approaches. Sea gulls rummage for scraps of food while red-tailed hawks and peregrine falcons dive for live prey. One year, young pelicans that had eaten toxic algae and fish were dropping on the runways.

“Wildlife situations can be unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” said Pitlik, 46, who has worked at LAX since the late 1990s. “It is important to minimize the risk and liability, but it’s also important to take care of the wildlife.” Next >>