DEVELOPING A RISK RATING SYSTEM FOR BIRD STRIKE OCCURRENCES

Bird strike reporting is becoming increasingly important as airport operators, airlines and government aviation authorities are requesting their staff to report all bird strike occurrences. In South Africa the Endangered Wildlife Trust has been managing an integrated bird and wildlife hazard management program at ten airports managed by the Airports Company South Africa for the past seven years. In an attempt to best understand the bird strike hazard at the various airports a bird strike definition has been adopted which includes the reporting of carcass remain retrieved from the runways through to the more serious incidents where damage was reported to the aircraft. Numerous occurrences have been reported at the airports during this period – several of which only involved carcass remains or strikes with small birds having no effect on the aircraft. In response to requests from both the airport authorities and local airlines a system has been developed to rate bird strike occurrences based on their severity and in so doing provide more meaningful statistical feedback to the airport and airline management. The approach taken involve using factors such as known high risk bird species occurring at the airport, whether or not damage was done to the aircraft etc. to rate all the bird strikes which occurred at the respective airport. This paper will explain in detail the approach taken to rate the severity and risk of bird strike occurrences at airports and in so doing provide more meaningful statistical feedback to decision makers

First Record of White Stork in a Birdstrike in South Africa Above 3,300 m AGL

Birdstrikes to aircrafts are increasing on an annual basis and pose significant aviation safety risks. Identification of the birds involved is key to developing mitigation strategies. Often the only information available to make identifications are feather and/or tissue samples. Relying on feathers alone to identify the bird species requires special expertise and access to museum collections for specimen comparisons. In 2017, feathers and tissue samples were recovered from the engine cowling of an airplane that had just landed at the Oliver Reginald (O. R.) Tambo international airport in South Africa after striking a bird at 3,353 m. To confirm the bird species, we sequenced a region of cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) for the unknown sample and compared the results to the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD) and National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) GenBank databases. Comparisons to these databases indicated that the species involved in the birdstrike incident was a white stork (Ciconia ciconia; 99.6–100% similarity). This was the first known record of a white stork involved in a birdstrike in South Africa and is important because it provided evidence of a high-altitude birdstrike. Availability of publicly accessible DNA barcoding databases that include all potential bird species from various geographic regions is a valuable tool in species identification and can aid wildlife management strategies at airports to reduce the risks associated with birdstrikes