High risk of ‘bird hit’ at site for Navi Mumbai airport, warns study

“Navi Mumbai harbours a very high bird diversity, which is being threatened by fast-paced development,” states the study, which observed around 287 species within 10 km of the proposed site since December 2011.

Written by Neha Kulkarni | Mumbai | Published: November 7, 2018 10:00:45 pm

According to the BNHS, as many as six “globally threatened” and eight “near threatened” species, including the Lesser Flamingo and Black-headed Ibis, were seen in abundance at the site during the study period. (Source: File Photo)

THE SITE of the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) faces a “high risk of bird hit”, according to a five-year environmental study conducted by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) between 2012 and 2016.

“Navi Mumbai harbours a very high bird diversity, which is being threatened by fast-paced development,” states the study, which observed around 287 species within 10 km of the proposed site since December 2011.

According to the BNHS, as many as six “globally threatened” and eight “near threatened” species, including the Lesser Flamingo and Black-headed Ibis, were seen in abundance at the site during the study period.

The BNHS will now conduct a ten-year study in consultation with City Industrial and Development Corporation (CIDCO) on ways to reduce bird hits at the upcoming airport. This study would involve understanding the migrating patterns of birds and suggest measures for ensuring minimum disturbance to their habitat.

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Optical illusion can cut birdstrikes on airplanes

16 Oct 2018

French development based on avian perception can both save rare birds and minimize fatal accidents.

Researchers from the CNRS and Université de Rennes, all in France, in collaboration with Airbus, have designed a visual pattern that achieves long-term avoidance of high-risk areas by birds of prey (“raptors”) – such as at airports and around wind turbines.

The scientists’ work opens the way for further investigation into the visual cognition of such birds, and it has applications for conservation, because raptors are among the most common victims of collisions with airplanes and turbine blades. The work is published in PLOS ONE.

Despite their exceptional visual acuity, raptors do not perceive certain hazardous obstacles such as glazed surfaces, or they are too late in detecting some moving objects, like airplanes.

In France alone, over 800 collisions between birds and airplanes are reported each year, with 15% of these classified as serious incidents. As available deterrent systems are hardly effective with raptors (smart birds typically learn to ignore "predator dummies" in a matter of days), scientists from the Éthologie Animale et Humaine (Ethos) research laboratory decided to develop a new means of repelling these birds from specific areas.

But it is not just the birds that suffer from these collisions: as the PLOS ONE article reports, based on many long-term sets of accident data from across the world, bird collisions are also the cause of many airplane crashes and human fatalities:

Read on  

Robotic herding of a flock of birds using drones

Date:  August 30, 2018

Source:  The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Summary:

Researchers made a new algorithm for enabling a single robotic unmanned aerial vehicle to herd a flock of birds away from a designated airspace. This novel approach allows a single autonomous quadrotor drone to herd an entire flock of birds away without breaking their formation.

Professor David Hyunchul Shim at KAIST in collaboration with Professor Soon-Jo Chung of Caltech and Professor Aditya Paranjape of Imperial College London investigated the problem of diverting a flock of birds away from a prescribed area, such as an airport, using a robotic UVA. A novel boundary control strategy called the m-waypoint algorithm was introduced for enabling a single pursuer UAV to safely herd the flock without fragmenting it.

The team developed the herding algorithm on the basis of macroscopic properties of the flocking model and the response of the flock. They tested their robotic autonomous drone by successfully shepherding an entire flock of birds out of a designated airspace near KAIST's campus in Daejeon, South Korea. This study is published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

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This robot bird will scare real birds away from airports

By Duncan Geere

 

Is it a bird, is it a plane?

Birds are bad news for airports. As well as the risk of a "bird-strike" downing a plane, they cause material damage estimated to run into billions of pounds a year.

To control the populations of birds, airports use pyrotechnics, sound cannons, lasers and other technological systems. But birds get used to them over time and learn to fly around them.

That's why roboticists from the University of Twente have developed a lifelike robotic bird that will patrol the landing strip, scaring real birds away at Edmonton International Airport in Canada.

The bot, which has been codenamed "Robird", mimics the appearance and flight of a falcon. It's the creation of Clear Flight Solutions - a spin-off company from the University - which collaborated on a Canadian drone services firm called Aerium for the project.

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Snowy Owls, Listed as Threat to Planes, Shot Down at JFK Airport: Source

The agency that oversees New York’s airports has added snowy owls to its no-fly list, shooting down at least two at Kennedy Airport and issuing an alert to kill any more that are spotted there, an airport source told NBC 4 New York. 

The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey issued the shoot-to-kill order for the birds after one flew into a jet's engine while the plane was on a tarmac at Kennedy last week, the source said.

Port Authority workers shot two snowy owls with a shotgun on Saturday amid concerns that they would also fly into planes. A wildlife specialist who works for the Port Authority spent 45 minutes chasing one of them down, the source said.

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Can This Rare Songbird Be Lured Away From Risky Neighborhoods?

A songbird called the streaked horned lark has a curious propensity for risky neighborhoods. That's not a good quality for a bird proposed for listing as a threatened species. Its preferred hangouts include airports, Army training fields, and dredge spoil dumping sites along the lower Columbia River. A two-state experiment seeks to find out if these rare larks can be enticed to safer habitats.

You can recognize this small, ground-nesting songbird by its yellow face and throat, black bib and feather tufts on its head that look like horns. The streaked horned lark's range used to extend from British Columbia to Oregon's Rogue River Valley. But a lot of the bird's habitat has succumbed to the plow and the bulldozer. At this point, there are fewer than 2,000 left.

Biologist Hannah Anderson of the Center for Natural Lands Management says the remaining holdouts have settled in some surprising spots. "They aren't a traditional endangered species where they are in these last, best great places. They're using airports, military bases, and dredged material islands along the lower Columbia River."

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Nigeria: Tackle Bird Strike Menace At Airports, Nama Urged

Chairman of the Technical and Administrative Review Panel on Domestic Airlines, which recently completed its work, Group Captain John Obakpolor, has called on the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) to urgently limit the incidence of bird strikes at the airports across the nation.

Obakpolor observed that bird strike on aircraft across the world happens on daily basis and urged the management of the agency to be proactive in tackling the menace of bird strike, which, he said, has caused loss of revenue to the affected airlines.

He made this known while addressing a stakeholders' meeting on bird strike and wild animal hazard control in Lagos on Monday at the NAMA's head office, and said it costs an airline over $450,000 to change a blade of an aircraft engine following an injection of birds.

He noted that the birds were now migrating Southwards because of the Autumn season in Europe, urging the bird strike/wild life control staff of the agency to brace up for the challenges ahead, saying that "one deadly strike is enough to turn the aviation industry upside down and that is why I am urging all of you to be proactive in handling this very important job".

Obakpolor further explained that the installation of aircraft birds strike avoidance radar system at Abuja airport, would not stop the problem on its own, pointing out that the air traffic controllers have roles to play in warning the pilots on the movement of the birds in and around the airport.

He equally emphasised the need for data collection as using that would assist the staff in plotting graphs to know the frequency of bird strikes and how it would affect the future plans in tackling bird strikes at the airports.

Managing Director of the Agency, Mr. Nnamdi Udoh, while speaking at the meeting, promised to expose the specialised staff to trainings in line with the culture of the management, just as he stressed the need for seriousness and dedication to duty by the newly transferred staff of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).

The stakeholders are expected to come out with operational manual on how to check the incidence of bird strikes and wild life encroachments at the airports.

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