Insecticide use to increase aviation safety

During 1995-2018, bird-aircraft collisions (bird strikes) cost the United States Air Force (USAF) more than $817.5 million, excluding the cost of personnel injuries, and were the cause of 27 human fatalities. Implementation of management actions to reduce the presence and abundance of hazardous birds on and around military airfields is critical for safe aircraft operations. Integrated wildlife damage management programs combine a variety of non-lethal and lethal management tools to reduce presence of hazardous birds. Managing prey populations (e.g., insects) on airfields is a potential management tool that has not been well studied. The objective of this study was to determine if insecticide applications on airfields can (1) reduce insect populations and (2) reduce the abundance of insectivorous birds hazardous to aircraft operations. At three USAF installations and one civilian airport in the Midwest, I established six plots at each study airfield, and implemented a before/after-control/treatment study design. Insect populations were sampled each week using a sweep netting method and bird populations were quantified using weekly systematic point-count surveys from May through September of 2019 and 2020. Three different insecticides were chosen to test the effectiveness of different treatments. Insecticides were applied to three of the six study plots at each airfield during the second field season (2020). We used a Bayesian approach to model and compare insect and bird abundances from counts before and after the insecticide treatments were applied. Results showed a significant decrease in insect abundance with two insecticides and significant decreases in ground foraging bird abundance with two insecticides and a significant decrease in aerial foraging bird abundance with one insecticide. Results from this study will help inform airfield managers on how to better manage airfield environments to reduce avian hazards to aircraft.