Life Sciences Commons^™

Soil Quality Manipulation To Reduce Bird Presence At Airports, Theresa K. Johnston, Bruce Branham, Jeffrey Brawn

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Aviation safety is an important concern in wildlife management as bird strikes risk human lives and result in costly damage. Habitat management can decrease bird abundances locally at airports. We tested soil manipulation as a technique to reduce local bird presence by establishing experimental plots with either intact topsoil or “stripped” subsoil with the aim of decreasing foraging substrate for birds. We estimated invertebrate abundance, and observed bird presence from 2006 to 2008. More birds visited topsoil plots (151.5 birds/ ha/hour) than subsoil plots (72.7 birds/ha/hour). Topsoil plots supported a greater biomass of invertebrates than subsoil plots ( = 0.39 …