National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC)

Field Station Leader: Dr. Travis L. DeVault
(Travis.L.DeVault@aphis.usda.gov)
Supervisory Research Wildlife Biologist
419-625-0242

USDA/APHIS/WS
National Wildlife Research Center
Ohio Field Station
6100 Columbus Avenue
Sandusky, Ohio 44870
(419) 625-0242
(419) 625-8465 fax

The field station, established in 1968, is 4 miles south of Sandusky, OH, and Lake Erie at Plum Brook Station, a 6,000-acre, fenced facility in Erie County operated by Glenn Research Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The restricted facility contains native grassland, reverted farmland, marsh, and woodland adjacent to intensively farmed land outside the fence. Abundant wildlife populations can be found on the facility, for example, the deer population inside the fence often exceeds 2,000 individuals. NWRC also leases from NASA 40 acres of farmland immediately outside the fence for wildlife damage studies.

Ohio has the highest breeding season population of blackbirds and starlings of any state or province, and marshes along Lake Erie are traditional late-summer congregating places for these birds. One of the largest nesting colonies of herring gulls on the Great Lakes is within 8 miles of the station. A major proportion of the continental population of ring-billed gulls, a species along with herring gulls often involved in safety hazards at airports, concentrates along the south shore of Lake Erie in spring and fall. Large concentrations of fish-eating birds such as double-crested cormorants also congregate on Lake Erie during migration. Thus, considerable field research on problem birds can be done within 60 miles of the station.

The primary focus of research at the NWRC Sandusky, OH, field station concerns wildlife hazards to aircraft. Commercial jet aircraft traffic has shown a dramatic increase. Wildlife on and near airports create a hazard to operating aircraft. Wildlife strikes can cause severe damage to aircraft, human injuries, and loss of life. Between 1990 and 2003, 52,000 wildlife strikes were reported to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); 10% had an adverse effect on the aircraft or flight operation. The estimated cost of wildlife strikes to U.S. civil aviation 1990-2003 was almost $500 million per year. Internationally, the commercial aviation industry incurs a loss of over $1.2 billion annually from wildlife strikes with aircraft. U.S. military losses are estimated to be over $100 million annually. As one dramatic example, the U.S. Air Force lost 24 airmen and a $190 million AWACS plane in 1995 after the aircraft hit geese on take-off at Elmendorf Air Force Base, AL.

The USDA/WS/NWRC Sandusky, OH, field station has worked with the FAA and Wildlife Services Biologists to develop science-based recommendations, policies, and procedures to control hazardous wildlife on airports and other locations where they present a hazard to aviation safety.

New Technologies to Deter Wildlife from Airports and Aircraft

* title of the official "Research Project" that describes the primary focus of research performed at this NWRC field station. The Project Web pages, in turn, describe goals, objectives and accomplishments of the research. All Project Web pages are also listed under their respective Research Program.

History Feature on the Station

National Support

NWRC Begins Gull Monitoring Program—In April and May 2007, NWRC biologists from the Sandusky, OH, field station and the Illinois Wildlife Services (WS) program banded and wing-tagged 580 nesting ring-billed gulls. Prior to the banding and tagging, Illinois WS personnel oiled ring-billed gull eggs in two nesting colonies in Chicago.  This work was done at the City of Chicago’s request in response to beach closures, over the past few summers, attributed to high bacteria counts thought to be from ring-billed gulls loafing and feeding at the beaches.  From the tagging, biologists hope to determine whether the nesting colonies are the source of gulls contaminating the beaches, and whether oiling the eggs of nesting gulls causes them to abandon the area at the conclusion of the nesting season.  Beaches in Chicago were monitored throughout the summer to determine if marked gulls use the beaches and if there is a difference in beach use between gulls that had their eggs oiled and those that did not.  The data are currently being evaluated and will be published in 2008.

Biologists Conduct Laughing Gull Nest Survey—In June 2007, biologists from the NWRC Sandusky field station, the New York WS program, the National Park Service (NPS), the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and other groups conducted a ground-truth census of the laughing-gull nesting colony in a 600-acre marsh complex in Jamaica Bay near New York City.  The marshes, on NPS property, are adjacent to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFKIA), where gull–aircraft collisions have posed a serious bird-strike problem.  All gull nests were counted in ten 100- x 100-foot ground-truthing plots established in the marsh.  Aerial photographs will be taken of the entire marsh complex, and researchers will obtain a nest census of the marsh by counting all nests, including those in the ground-truth plots, on the enlarged aerial photographs.  Counts on the photographs of the ground-truth plots will allow for determining the accuracy of the aerial census.  Results of a previous census indicate that the colony contained about 2,500 nests in 2006, a decline of 66% from the 7,600 nests counted in 1990.

Management programs by WS at JFKIA from 1991 through 2006 have reduced laughing gull–aircraft collisions by 76 to 99% annually compared to 1988–90, when the airport averaged more than 150 strikes per year.  Although the local population of laughing gulls next to JFKIA has declined as a result of these management actions, the regional population from Virginia to Maine has shown an increase during 1990 through 2006, based on analysis of North American Breeding Bird Survey data.  This NWRC-developed census technique is a critical component of the gull management program at JFKIA and may be of use in other situations where colonial-nesting waterbirds conflict with human activities.