When it comes to airport security in wildlife-rich Colorado, coyotes and Canada geese can be more problematic than scissors and gels.
From the plains to Denver to the mountains, airport managers must be resourceful to keep critters off runways and out of engines.
Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport manager John DeVore can attest to that.
“We have a river to the west, wetlands to the south and another river to the southeast,” DeVore said.
All that habitat harbors birds and critters that tend to visit the airport’s 400 acres. They come calling even though the airport was fenced five years ago.
Last year a bear left his nose print on the glass of the terminal. Coyotes, raccoons, prairie dogs and foxes have found their way in through culverts or burrows and trotted across runways. Ducks and geese have flapped en masse through the airspace. Deer have made a dash through open gates. Before the fence went up, planes hit three deer.
But Gunnison is by no means alone with its critter problem.
The Federal Aviation Administration logged 1,917 wildlife strikes by planes in Colorado from 1988 through 2005. That ranks Colorado eighth in the nation for wildlife strikes. Birds accounted for 1,843 of those strikes. Deer, elk and coyote were the mammals most often hit.
Wildlife strikes are continuing to go up globally, and the FAA attributes this increase to several factors: more reporting, more wildlife, more air traffic and quieter planes.
Wildlife strikes reported by U.S. carriers jumped from 1,744 in 1990 to 7,136 in 2005. Encounters with birds – including gulls and black vultures crashing through airplane windshields, and snowy owls, homing pigeons and great blue herons sucked into engines – caused nearly $234 million in damage.
Airport managers around Colorado say fencing and other mitigation supported by the FAA in recent years seem to be lessening problems. Increased vigilance and attention to wildlife habits and habitat have also helped.
In Gunnison, that means keeping grasslands mowed, burning willows along the river, following animal tracks to find gaps under the fencing, hazing coyotes with firecrackers and rubber bullets, and killing prairie dogs. Hunting programs have been established for some geese-heavy areas near the airport.
At Denver International Airport, officials build fences and cut back habitat. Animal-control officers have used hazing and harassment to dissuade geese, and poison is available as a last resort to kill small prey that attract predators.
At the Cortez Municipal Airport, deer regularly were finding their way through a horizontal wire fence until an 8-foot- high woven-wire fence was built.
“It was a pain in the neck to get them out. We had to chase them all over,” said Cortez airport manager Russ Machen.
The Garfield County Airport has skirmishes with the occasional deer, elk and coyotes that get past a fence, but one of its worst headaches in recent years has been feral cats.
“We had about 30 feral cats running around,” said airport manager Brian Conde. “We trapped and had them euthanized, except for four that were fixed and became airport pets.”
The Durango-LaPlata County Airport has prairie dog and deer problems and an overabundance of crows, but it also has a slightly different wildlife quandary: The airport has to delay expansion of a runway because of a pair of nesting golden eagles in the area. Those eagles have not had any close encounters with aircraft.
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib contributed to this report.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
