Sports Biz

Photo By: Jeff Trei Canada Goose

After yesterday's amazing plane landing in the Hudson River, I decided to step away from SportsBiz for a bit and do a little reporting on the story.

I called a couple people in the airline industry to help me answer the question: What group of people is more valuable today than they were yesterday?

The answer they came up with? Airport Wildlife Biologists, who make between $30,000 and $70,000 a year.

Last night, I spoke with Dr. Nick Carter of Birdstrike Control Program out of Willis, Texas. His company provides all the airport wildlife biologists for the Israeli Air Force as well as some U.S. Air Force bases, including Fort Walton in Florida. Carter said that more Israeli planes have gone down due to birds than from enemy fire. They have 14 employees that have master's degrees or PhD's in wildlife management.

He said that just as wind shear accidents now seem preventable, this bird strike was likely preventable since the impact with the birds likely happened within the airport radius normally taken care of by these biologists.

JFK happens to have a huge wildlife management program, but two people told me they don't tend to advertise it, because they kill a lot of birds and they don't want that out there.

Carter says it's very possible that this incident could cause an uptick in wildlife management at the airports since he says the monitoring now across the country--and the world for that matter--isn't close to adequate.

Fifty percent of the job is actually shooting and shooing the birds, while the other half is changing the way airports operate, including putting border collies, which act as wolves to the birds, on the runways and paying attention to the way the grass grows.

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