A new report about wildlife hazards to aviation shows that 2019 was a record-breaking year for wildlife strikes.
According to the report released in February 2021 from the FAA and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, there was an increase of 1,007 wildlife strikes in 2019 over the 2018 total, a jump of 6%.
The number of wildlife strikes annually reported has increased more than 9-fold from 1990 to a record high of 17,228 in 2019, officials noted.
Through an interagency agreement, Wildlife Services’ Airport Wildlife Hazards Program reviews and compiles all reported wildlife strikes to the FAA National Wildlife Strike Database. Wildlife Services also enters wildlife strikes from various sources not reported through the FAA’s on-line reporting portal.
Wildlife strike reporting is vital to managing safety for both aviation and avian species, officials note.
Although overall numbers of reported strikes continue to rise, those causing damage have increased only slightly since 2010 and are still below the record number in 2000, according to the report.
Damaging strikes declined 4% between 2000 and 2019, from 743 to 710. This decline has been most pronounced for commercial aircraft in the airport environment (at greater than 1,500 feet above ground level), but has not declined for general aviation, according to the report.
Actions conducted by airports and their biologists to mitigate the risk have been implemented at many airports since the 1990s, FAA officials noted. These are likely responsible for the reduction in damaging strikes or those with a negative effect on flight at passenger-certificated airports between 2000-2019 despite continued increases in the populations of many large bird species.
Strikes occur every day, but when compared to the total number of flights, they are rare, officials added.
“Although eliminating all strikes at all times may be impossible, comprehensive assessment, planning, and management techniques have successfully mitigated damaging strikes on or near airports,” the report states.
The FAA and Wildlife Services, which assists with strike avoidance at more than 890 airports throughout the country, agree that the problem of wildlife hazards cannot be fully addressed without knowing the species of wildlife involved.
Identifying the bird species involved in a wildlife strike is critical information for addressing aviation strike hazards. When a bird carcass isn’t available, airport or airline personnel or airport biologists collect any biological remains, known as “snarge.”
They can send the snarge to the Smithsonian Institution Feather Lab, which in turn can identify bird and other wildlife species through morphological and DNA analyses.
In 2020, Wildlife Services and the Feather Lab released a report marking a milestone in the National Wildlife Strike Database — the 600th species listed in the database. Scientists determined it to be a cerulean warbler.
In this strike event involving the cerulean warbler, neither the airport nor biologists could have reduced chances of the collision, which likely occurred during nighttime migration, officials pointed out.
“However, knowing about the strike underscores one of the obstacles birds face during annual migration cycles,” officials said. “It also demonstrates the applicability of the information available in the National Wildlife Strike Database to disciplines beyond aviation, such as ornithology.”