Managing and maintaining a safe and secure environment at the Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport doesn’t involve just planes, runways, and air space; airbase safety extends to wildlife, as well.
Wildlife incidents cost U.S. civil aviation over $700 million and cause more than 550,000 hours of aircraft downtime every year. Given that, the Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport, the 179th Airlift Wing, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Wildlife Services work to be proactive about this common concern. All wildlife seeks water, food and shelter, so the partners try to limit the availability of those at the airport.
“We’re a pretty tight-knit group working together to do the ultimate, and the ultimate is public safety,” stated 179th AW Chief of Safety, Lt. Col. Jeff Charette.
He added, “Every airport has a unique ecosystem.” And the Mansfield airport’s ecosystem is attractive to all sorts of wildlife, with the wide open spaces and surrounding trees and bodies of water.
Some of the common visitors at the base are red-tailed hawks, turkey vultures, geese, crows, turkeys, coyotes, and deer, anyone of which is large enough to damage aircraft.
MSgt Matthew Dille of the 179th AW Airfield Management and the Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard (BASH) program explained that there are two ways they handle wildlife at the base: active forms and passive forms. (See Wildlife Intervention at left.)
USDA Wildlife Specialists Jordan Linnell and Caleb Kauffman are integral in helping maintain a safe and secure environment. One example of this is by trapping and relocating red-tailed hawks.
“We have shown success in trying to relocate some species… But we can’t relocate every species, so if we can’t harass, exclude or otherwise prevent wildlife from using the airport, sometimes we have to lethally remove them. And even when we go into a lethal removal, it’s very selective and a very small percentage of wildlife management,” said Jonathon Cepek, Wildlife Biologist and District Supervisor with the USDA.
He went on to state that oftentimes this method is used to reinforce the nonlethal techniques.
“As silly as it sounds, when mister goose loses his buddy, he remembers it, and he might leave and not come back,” said Charette.
Imagine high performance aircraft engines as a vacuum. “Whatever’s in front of it, it’s sucking in, and the minute you put something in there that can’t be chewed up and spit it out the back end, then parts of the engine are coming apart instead. And the minute you destroy part of an engine, you destroy the rest of the engine,” explained Charette.
Since 1980, three C-130 aircrafts with the 179th were damaged because of bird strikes. Fortunately, no one was harmed, and Charette noted, “Our engines are literally built to eat dirt. They’re built to sustain in extreme conditions.”
Another deterrent mechanism was the placement of a wildlife-proof-specific fence around the perimeter of the airport in 2012. Charette mentioned that several years before the fence was erected, he counted at least 50 deer at the base. Now, however, the deer sightings are practically nonexistent.
In 2007, a wire grid system of 150 – 200 ft was placed over a large pond on the outskirts of the airport. This technique is meant to deter birds from using the pond, ultimately deterring birds from being near the airport entirely. “Sometimes there are mallards that get in, but [the grid system] has helped a lot. We’ve gone from seeing 200 – 300 geese, to this year seeing about two to three mating pairs,” said Charette.
When an aircraft reaches an altitude of about 35,000 feet, the temperatures may be as low as minus 56 degrees, making the windshields brittle. As a preventative measure to ensure the windshields don’t shatter if the plane strikes a bird, the windshields are heated to keep them more flexible. To test the pliability of the windshields, the Air Force has a bird cannon that fires 5 lb chicken carcasses at windshields at 200 mph.
Cepek noted, “The physics of a goose striking an average aircraft, generally, is like a car striking an elephant.”
The Automatic Terminal informational Service (ATIS) provides air traffic control advisories along with bird advisories as another way of managing wildlife safety at the base.
The National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) in Sandusky conducts scientific research to alleviate wildlife hazards at airports. Cepek explained that based on NWRC studies of grassland management and the particular wildlife species observed on the airfield, it was determined that 7 – 14 inches was the most suitable range for Mansfield Airport. Vegetation at this height does not allow plants to produce seeds but is not high enough to encourage nesting by birds. Producing seeds would attract black birds that would like to graze for seeds, which would, in turn, attract bigger animals that eat the birds.
Wildlife Services Staff Biologist Tara Baranowski is heavily involved in the research and analysis aspect of wildlife management at the airport by helping conduct hazard assessments, which assess and survey which animals are hazardous, and helping with the hazard management plans.
On behalf of the USDA’s Wildlife Services, Cepek explained, “We try to assist the Airport Manager and 179th AW by collecting formal data that can be analyzed, which is then submitted to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration).”
Charette further noted, “It’s a huge working relationship with everybody involved…We’re protecting not only the people, but the wildlife themselves, because they’re endangered as much as they’re a danger to us,” said Charette.
“And that’s why we say, ‘Safer skies for all that fly,’” Cepek stated.
“We’re protecting not only the people, but the wildlife themselves, because they’re endangered as much as they’re a danger to us,” said 179th AW Chief of Safety, Lt. Col. Jeff Charette.
Active forms include such things as igniting propane exploders, which shoot bursts of air and sound like an explosion; shooting pyrotechnics, similar to firecrackers, in the birds’ proximity to chase them away; and capturing the wildlife in traps and removing the animals to another location.
Passive forms include maintaining grass height at the length of 7 – 14 in (this range was deemed appropriate by several studies and research); removing fruit trees from the area; and removing worms from the pavement after a rainstorm to make the area less attractive to wildlife.
