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SALT LAKE CITY -- One out of three commercial airports in the US may not be making the grade when it comes to preventing bird strikes, according to the FAA.
USA Today is reporting 150 airports have been identified by the FAA as failing to keep up with required studies about bird and wildlife threats.
Salt Lake City International Airport believes it is not among those 150 airports. Spokeswoman Barbara Gann says the airport is up-to-date on all of its requirements and may even be ahead of the game.
"We have an extremely detailed and well-managed bird mitigation program," Gann says, adding that the proximity of the Great Salt Lake is one reason for that. "We're in wetland area, and there are a lot of migratory paths through the area, so we do pay a lot of attention to it."
The prevention ranges from a natural approach, like moving animals, nests and eggs if needed, to more invasive methods called hazing.
"We have an officer assigned 12 hours every day to wildlife mitigation. And those duties include automatic bird cannons that are located throughout the airfield," Gann says, "and then we also have guns with cracker shells that they shoot to deter birds."
It doesn't stop there.
"We also work with the entire state of Utah to find the best methods in order to deal with each different species of bird that we encounter. It's pretty involved, and it's pretty effective," Gann says.
In January 2009, Utah reported five wildlife strikes or encounters statewide to the FAA. Not surprisingly, one was a California Gull. Two of the birds were of an unknown species. The other two included a horned lark and a European starling. It's not known how many of those came from the Salt Lake airport, if any.
E-mail: bbruce@ksl.com
