Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

NNSL (July 19/99) - With so many bodies of water in the Arctic and in the Northwest Territories along with vast stretches of forested areas, the North is an ideal habitat for many bird species.

Unfortunately, it also creates a great area of concern for airport managers in Nunavut and the NWT, who must keep a constant vigil for fear of close encounters between aircraft and avian wildlife.

Bruce MacKinnon, a wildlife control specialist with Transport Canada, explains some of the dilemmas faced by airport wildlife management.

"September, October and November are when the large waterfowl start migrating and that's a pretty critical time of year," MacKinnon said. "There not a lot of events, but usually when an aircraft hits a large flock of migrating waterfowl, there is usually quite a bit of damage done."

Such a scenario occurred less than four years ago, Sept. 22, 1995 at the Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska.

A Boeing E-3B Sentry, carrying 24 crew members, crashed during take-off while on a routine training mission. It slammed into a large flock of Canada Geese. Both left engines of the plane ingested a number of birds and immediately caught fire, causing the plane to stall and crash into a hilly wooded area less than two kilometres from the airport. All crew members were killed.

It was later determined that wildlife patrols around the airport had been extremely lax -- the last runway check occurred nearly three-and-a-half hours before the accident and air traffic controllers failed to warn aircraft personnel of the impending danger from flocking geese adjacent to the runway.

In Hay River, the airport is an island surrounded by the waters of the Great Slave Lake and a favourite place for seagulls and sandhill cranes to gather on the runway and forage for worms and other invertebrates. For airport manager Otto Epp and his staff, it is a never-ending chore to keep the birds and the planes out of harm's way.

"We actually have a bird and mammal plan that we follow," Epp said. "We have staff that come in earlier in the morning before the first flights arrive and they do a complete airport inspection.

"We have a flare gun that sends up screamers and explosive rounds that scare the birds and mammals away. We do this a minimum of three times a day."

The Hay River airport recorded two incidence of bird strikes last year. Along with noise repellents, airport crews also trim lawns adjacent to the runways to about six to eight inches, which is too tall for some of the smaller birds to feed from and too short for large migratory birds like geese and swans.

Even with these kind of safety measures in place, Epp acknowledges that all it takes is one bird to create a disaster.

"The big concern is that if a bird was to hit an aircraft's wing and stay there, that's like if your tire on your car is unbalanced, then you get a vibration," Epp said.

"We have a poster up here that says: 'When does a goose become an elephant?' It means that if you had just one bird stuck to the wing, it causes the engine to become unbalanced and it will vibrate uncontrollably until that engine has to be shut off."

All together, there were 11 reported incidence of bird strikes in the Northwest Territories last year and none reported in Nunavut.

Iqaluit airport manager John Graham reports that although bird patrols occur around the clock at the airport, there has been little to report as far as bird strikes are concerned.

"Birds are not much of a problem at Iqaluit Airport," Graham said. "We send in a report once a year and we've had nothing to report yet. There's a lot more open spaces around here and I think that helps keep the birds away.

"I guess we're lucky. Some airports down south have a real problem with bird strikes."

Out of the two territories, Yellowknife has the busiest airport and, thus, it is hardly surprising that Yellowknife Airport has the highest incidence of bird strikes in the North with five last year. "You hear that mechanical whining sound when you pass Jackfish Lake or Giant mine," Yellowknife Airport manager Tom Cook said. "That's a distress call to scare away birds from the property. We use the same thing here too.

"We use the same noise bangers too, but the birds have been really bad this year. Every time our crews go out to scare birds away in the yellow trucks, the birds take off and land right back down again when they leave.

"I guess what you can call it is man imposing his activity into the environment of the animals and at some point of time you have to accommodate them. It's something you have to try and deal with as best as you can."