IT was a miracle that pilot “Sully” Sullenberger managed to land US Airways Flight 1549 safely last week after a flock of geese destroyed its engines just after takeoff from La Guardia. But it’s almost as much a miracle that geese hadn’t taken out a plane leaving a New York airport long ago – and it’ll be a bigger miracle if it doesn’t happen again.
How do I know? The courts forced the Port Authority to hire me to get the airports in compliance with various laws while solving such problems. But while I was allowed to solve some things, the PA and the US Department of Agriculture refused to let me do my job.
The PA didn’t want to fix the deadly bird problem at La Guardia and JFK; it wanted to look like it had already fixed things.
I’ve spent my career fixing environmental problems throughout the aviation and aerospace industries. The toughest problem has always been to get government agencies to do their jobs, rather than make one mess after another and then sweep it under the rug.
The bird problems at New York’s airports go back decades. They got particularly dangerous when local agencies foolishly put landfills and wildlife refuges right next to our airports.
At one point, three landfills surrounded JFK- and the garbage attracted thousands of birds that then fed, rested and bred in every nook and cranny next to the airport. The National Park Service has massive bird-breeding colonies next to JFK, while the city government and the Audubon Society sited bird-breeding colonies right by La Guardia.
When all this created a bird hazard at the airports, the Department of Agriculture was allowed to send teams of gunmen to shoot down the birds. It shot hundreds of tons of birds – but violated environmental laws to do it. Environmentalists sued, and a federal judge ordered the PA to get the job done right.
That’s where I came in, as the guy the judge forced everyone to hire to make the region’s airports safe to fly in and out of. (My credentials include a number of similar problems I’ve solved around the country – plus a Sierra Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award for doing my work in environmentally sensitive ways.)
I made tremendous progress, despite all the hurdles the USDA and the PA put in my way. But the authorities wouldn’t let me solve the problems openly, honestly and effectively – instead insisting on hiring less-qualified people to do a bad job. In January 1999, I left the job.
The answer to the Canada goose problem is to round up the resident breeding geese during the months that they’re molting and unable to fly. I began doing that in my time but the PA then abandoned the effort.
With the right permits and organization, it’s possible to rapidly reduce the breeding population, ending most of this threat. Don’t blame the environmental laws – the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the US Fish and Wildlife are willing to work with any intelligent and indefatigable bureaucrat.
But PA officials have never been interested in solving this problem, only in whitewashing it.
After the Flight 1549 incident, for example, the PA told reporters that it has an extensive wildlife-management program. This supposedly included shooting and trapping thousands of birds a year and removing shrubs and trees where birds like to nest, plus pyrotechnics (noisemaking) to scare them off. It also said it discourages bird-feeding and cleans up garbage-bin areas where birds look for food.
Where to start? Well, shrubs aren’t the problem; geese prefer open areas to graze and to build their nests and breed. Pyrotechnics? Why would birds that live near airports – the noisiest places on Earth – be bothered by the occasional fake cannon blast?
Discouraging bird feeding? The PA does next to nothing on this in its area of responsibility, within a 5-mile radius of the airport borders. In that same area, its (ill-managed) workers fail miserably at collecting geese, nests and eggs.
The PA also claims bird strikes have been decreasing as a result of its efforts. In fact, the ones that matter have been increasing. During the decades the PA has been conducting the efforts it says have been effective, we’ve gone from no Canada-goose strikes to a situation where the birds constitute a major hazard.
Getting the PA to do its job may fall on the pilots. Why are they accepting clearance to land and take off when gaggles of geese are lounging around the runways? If they refuse to fly, the airlines and the public will scream – and maybe the PA’s overpaid mismanagers will finally do their jobs. Unfortunately, the pilots’ careers are in jeopardy whenever they do anything that upsets their airlines, like refuse to take off under dangerous circumstances.
Steven D. Garber heads the consulting firm Worldwide Ecology, based in White Plains.