Integrated Bird Management Techniques to Mitigate Conflict at Airports and Urban Facilities.
Management of birds to reduce human-wildlife conflicts in urban environments remains a challenge to wildlife management professionals. Many factors contribute to making urban wildlife management programs unique and often more difficult to implement including: high population densities of human and urban adapted wildlife; a human altered landscape that often provides wildlife attractants; decreasing human tolerance for nuisance wildlife; increased public, political and media interest; and availability of tools and techniques applicable in a city environment. A variety of conflicts with birds may occur in urban habitats ranging from threats to human health and safety and damage to property to more subjective impacts effecting quality of life for city residents. Integrated wildlife damage management programs are commonly implemented to mitigate accumulation of droppings, noise, property damage, clean-up costs and threats to human health and safety from wildlife facilitated disease as well as to reduce bird-aircraft collisions at airports. Urban bird species most often involved in damage situations in urban habitat include gulls, Canada geese, crows, starlings, house sparrows, and pigeons although other species may also be in conflicts with human interests. Reduction of wildlife hazards at airports, management of pest species landfills and resolving conflicts with large winter crow roosts in cities are examples of typical requests for assistance to the United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services (WS) program in the Northeast United States. In this paper we will provide examples of integrated bird management programs and recommendations for enhancing efficacy and efficiency. Background, need and basic components of a “typical” wildlife hazard management program at airports will be discussed. In addition, projects to disperse large urban crow roosts and manage gulls and blackbirds at landfills (including an emergency wildlife management response after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center) will be provided to highlight program evolution, results and the specific types of research and monitoring needed for effective implementation of large scale urban bird management programs.
Speaker Biographies
Allen Gosser is a Wildlife Biologist living in Albany, New York. He has worked full time for the USDA, Animal and Plant Protection Service, Wildlife Services since 2000. He received a B.A. in International Business (1987) and a B.S. in Wildlife Sciences (1994) from Auburn University in Alabama. After graduating from Auburn, Allen completed a M.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife—Wildlife Damage Management (1997) from the Berryman Institute at Utah State University. For his graduate thesis, Allen studied brood rearing and nesting behavior of urban Canada geese in Connecticut. Post completion of his Master’s degree, he served two years in the Peace Corps where he had the good fortune to work with a variety of issues concerning giraffes in Niger, West Africa, including environmental education, ecotourism development, crop damage issues, a feeding behavior study, and a genetic diversity study. During his tenure with Wildlife Services New York he has worked as the airport biologist and as the Assistant State Director. He has professional interests in the New York airport program, a non-lethal goose management program on Long Island and the Hudson Valley, and I.T. development.
Richard Chipman is a certified Wildlife Biologist living in Castleton, New York with his wife and two sons. He has worked for the USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services since 1991 including seven years as a Wildlife Biologist in Vermont and as the New York State Director since 1997. He has served as both the Wildlife Services National Assistant Rabies Coordinator and the West Nile Virus Coordinator. Rich has also worked as an Adjunct Professor at the State University of New York at Cobleskill in Cobleskill, New York where he teaches a course on wildlife damage management. Prior to beginning his career with Wildlife Services he worked for various State Fish and Wildlife Agencies and Universities on rare wildlife species in Vermont, Maine, Kansas and Costa Rica, Central America. Rich received his BA in Biology and BS in Wildlife Management from the University of Maine and his MS in Wildlife Biology from the University of Vermont. He is Past President and Newsletter Editor for the Northeast Association of Wildlife Damage Biologists, former Secretary of the National Animal Damage Control Association, past Vermont Representative to the New England Chapter of The Wildlife Society and Past Secretary for the New York Chapter of The Wildlife Society. He recently completed a two term position as a board member of The Wildlife Societies Wildlife Damage Working Group. His primary wildlife interests include the management of wildlife rabies and other zoonotic diseases, the impact of colonial waterbirds and other wildlife at airports, conflicts associated with double-crested cormorants and urban crow management.