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Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2009 3:18 pm Posts: 61947
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Released today from Eagle On Alliance:FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
ANOTHER BALD EAGLE STRUCK AND KILLED AT NORFOLK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Norfolk, Virginia – Eagle On Alliance (EOA) is sad to announce that yet another bald eagle was struck and killed at the Norfolk International Airport (ORF).
Early Tuesday morning a bald eagle was struck and killed by a commercial aircraft approaching Runway 5 for landing. The eagle was struck and killed by the landing gear of the plane. There were no human injuries and the plane did not suffer any damage.
At the moment, EOA does not know whether this eagle is associated with the Norfolk Botanical Garden (NBG) eagle pair. After numerous calls and emails to the Airport, the City of Norfolk and the agencies involved, no one will provide any information on the identity of this eagle.
This latest eagle strike is yet another example of Airport not doing enough to keep eagles and other large birds off the runways at ORF. On April 26, 2011 a female bald eagle nesting in Norfolk Botanical Garden (Mom Norfolk) was struck and killed by a plane’s landing gear at Norfolk Airport while she was sitting at the end of a runway eating a fish after staff at ORF failed to disperse her from their runway.
Airport records obtained by EOA under the Freedom of Information Act show that prior to the death of Mom Norfolk, ORF was only spending between $25,000 and $30,000 a year on wildlife dispersal efforts at the airport. These records also show that even after this incident, the Airport staunchly refused to increase its wildlife dispersal budget to anything over $40,000. However, even this small increase in funding for wildlife dispersal efforts has not been used to improve dispersal techniques at the Airport. Rather, those records demonstrate that all of the additional funding from the Airport has been used to fund the persistent nest removal and harassment of the eagle pair at Norfolk Botanical Garden.
To put this into perspective, other airports spent anywhere from $114,000 to $378,000 a year for effective wildlife dispersal efforts at the airport itself. These efforts almost always include a full-time employee whose sole job is to observe and disperse wildlife on the airport’s runways.
The Norfolk Airport has well over $150,000,000 in total assets. There is simply no excuse for the Norfolk Airport to refuse to increase its efforts on Airport property to disperse large birds when they are present on the runway. Instead of spending additional funds to insure the traveling public’s safety, the Airport has chosen to budget more than $11 million for cosmetic improvements to its lobby – including a huge skylight covering center court and marble wrapped columns. This most recent eagle death could have easily been avoided if the Norfolk Airport had a full-time employee looking for and dispersing birds. Other airports have full-time staff monitoring runways when planes are taking off and landing.
Norfolk International Airport has millions of dollars in assets and should be able to afford one full-time person and a pair of binoculars.
So long as the Norfolk Airport refuses to increase wildlife dispersal efforts at the Airport itself, the fate of the beloved Norfolk Botanical Garden eagle pair remains uncertain. The airport continues to fund nest removal and harassment of these birds.
And if, in fact, the eagle that was killed Tuesday was one of the NBG pair, it only serves to further show that harassing the NBG pair for the past two years has been unsuccessful, to say the least. These eagles have been moving around the Airport looking for a safe place to build a nest. Yet, when they find a tree and built a nest, the nest is destroyed. This has happened eight times.
If the NBG eagle pair was simply left alone and their last nest not torn down last December they would have been in that nest and not flying near the airport searching for a new nest site. The harassment of these eagles has forced them to find another tree time and time again putting them in harm’s way. Indeed, the last nest removed was just 50 yards from Azalea Garden Road – almost a mile from the Norfolk Airport runway.
The idea that removing the nest of the NBG eagle pair will eliminate the risk of a wildlife strike at the Norfolk Airport is not supported by any evidence. If the Norfolk Airport was seriously concerned with bird strikes and passenger safety, it would increase funding for dispersal efforts at the Airport itself and not simply pay to harass one pair of bald eagles.
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