Talk about unintended consequences. “Bird strikes” — or collisions between birds and aircraft — are increasing for two reasons, according to the federal government’s leading expert on the phenomenon: The environment is cleaner and airplanes are quieter.
While federal authorities have not confirmed initial reports that the US Airways jet that crashed Thursday in New York’s Hudson River hit a flock of birds shortly after taking off from LaGuardia airport, Dr. Richard A. Dolbeer told msnbc.com that such bird-aircraft collisions are on the rise.
"The key thing is that we’ve seen a remarkable increase in populations of many or most large birds — birds such as great blue heron, osprey, bald eagle, snow goose, Canada goose,” said Dolbeer, a retired ornithologist with the Department of Agriculture at the Wildlife Services in Sandusky, Ohio. "These populations are increasing because we’ve done a really good job of wildlife conservation in North America for many species, because we’ve cleaned up the environment, gotten rid of DDT, enacted the the Clean Water Act. All good things, but because of these, we’ve had incredible surges of many species that are hazardous to aviation.
