Ohio Field Station

Facility

The NWRC Ohio Field Station, established in 1968, is located 4 miles south of Sandusky, OH, and Lake Erie at the Neil Armstrong Test Facility , a 6,000-acre, fenced facility in Erie County operated by  Glenn Research Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The restricted-access facility contains native grassland, reverted farmland, marsh, and woodland adjacent to intensively farmed land and urban settings outside the fence. Abundant wildlife populations can be found on the facility; for example, the deer population inside the fence can exceed 2,000 individuals. Field station facilities include indoor and outdoor aviaries, several permanent bird-traps, drying and processing rooms for field samples, shop space, a video laboratory for behavioral experiments, a 5-acre fenced pond for waterfowl research, and conference rooms. 

Further information about the research conducted at the Sandusky, OH field station can be found on the  Aviation Safety Research page.

Ohio Field Station History

The NWRC Ohio Field Station (OFS) was created in 1968 by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, to be administered as a part of the Animal Damage Control (ADC) program and in response to calls from Ohio farmers concerning wildlife damage to their crops. Dr. Mel Dyer arrived in the same year from the University of Guelph, Ontario, to take charge of the field station. The focus of research for the OFS staff was bird damage to agriculture, primarily damage to corn crops by blackbird species and invasive European starlings. 

In 1972, Dr. Richard Dolbeer took over leadership of the OFS and continued to guide its efforts on management of bird damage to agriculture. By the 1980s, he and his team also began to address a new, burgeoning human-wildlife problem area—bird collisions or “strikes” with aircraft. By 1976, all ADC research was consolidated under the Denver Wildlife Research Center. In 1985, the ADC program and the OFS were transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The field station was one of seven other field research facilities under Denver Wildlife Research Center, now the National Wildlife Research Center located in Fort Collins, CO.

By 1989, Dr. Dolbeer’s actions to understand and prevent bird strikes led to the first of a long series of five-year Interagency Agreements between the Federal Aviation Administration and ADC, now known as Wildlife Services. By the early 2000s the OFS was the recognized world leader in research to mitigate wildlife hazards to aviation safety.

Ohio Field Station Today

The NWRC Ohio Field Station’s (OFS) team of researchers and support staff generates and disseminates ecological information related to wildlife collisions with vehicles and structures, including civil and military aircraft. This goal comprises 3 objectives:

1. understand/quantify animal sensory ecology and animal behavioral responses to risk, like predation risk, to reduce wildlife collisions,
2. understand/quantify the role of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in wildlife monitoring and hazing, and
3. understand/quantify airspace and landscape use of birds near airports to reduce the probability of an aircraft strike.

To meet these objectives, OFS scientists conduct lab and field experiments, many of which are carried out in northern Ohio.

Our offices and facilities on the 6,000-acre Neil Armstrong Test Facility (NATF) in Sandusky allow us opportunities to work with free-ranging bird and mammal species. Some of our research questions, however, cannot be answered using the facilities at the NATF, simply because of the need for research on actual airports or that our facility is not used extensively by some species of interest (e.g., gulls and vultures). Through collaborations with stakeholders and the Wildlife Services’ State operations program, we have conducted research on local areas, such Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, Old Woman Creek State Nature Preserve and National Estuarine Reserve, Cedar Point Amusement Park, Erie County Landfill, and airports and military airfields in Cleveland, Dayton, and Toledo.

The OFS staff also collaborate with government and university partners. Over the years our collaborations have included the Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Defense, State fish and wildlife agencies (especially the Ohio Division of Wildlife), Auburn University, Indiana State University, Michigan State University, Mississippi State University, North Carolina State University, the Ohio State University, Purdue University, University of Illinois, the University of Georgia, and a variety of international government and nongovernmental entities, as well as foreign universities. Importantly, wildlife research is effective at improving our understanding of our wildlife resources and guiding management only when it is objectively scrutinized. OFS scientists submit their research findings to peer-reviewed, professional, scientific journals where they receive critical review from other researchers. This peer-review process is the gold standard by which our research can effectively inform wildlife management methods and decisions.

The OFS staff have expertise in avian visual ecology and implications for aircraft lighting design intended to enhance bird detection of and response to approaching aircraft; raptor movement ecology as related to strike hazards posed to civil and military aircraft operations; and UAS applications to wildlife management, including non-lethal methods to move wildlife from areas of conflict, as well as use of this new technology to count birds and mammals in the airport environment. These research areas necessitate collaborative team approaches to generate solutions to problems. Research by the OFS staff subsequently informs management on civil and military airfields, as well as public entities and resources, like landfills, that affect wildlife use and human health and safety.

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