Inside the 24/7 fight at Utah’s 2 busiest airports to keep migrating birds out of airplane engines

Utah’s two busiest airports both sit next to wetlands — major pit stops along a migratory bird superhighway literally called the “Pacific Flyway” that make it uniquely tricky to keep airplane traffic from colliding with cruising waterfowl.

Among the most dangerous are pelicans. Clocking in at 4-5 feet tall with a 9-foot wingspan, they’re also among the heaviest birds in the world at about 30 pounds.

“They’re very large,” Provo Municipal Airport operations manager Matt Jensen said, “and they like to hover.”

Pilots have known birds pose a risk to aircraft since Orville Wright struck one over an Ohio cornfield in 1905. But a flock of geese changed everything in 2009, when Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed a severely damaged, bird-struck Airbus A320, and all its passengers, on the Hudson River.

That near-tragedy thrust airports into a new wildlife mitigation paradigm. Over the next 15 years, the Federal Aviation Administration poured over $400 million into wildlife-related projects to ensure safe air travel.

In Salt Lake City, where the state’s busiest airport abuts Great Salt Lake, that means wildlife mitigation experts must remain especially vigilant. Over 12 million migratory birds stop there each year to feast on the lake’s abundant vegetation and insects, said Jason Jones, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources’ migratory bird and falconry programs coordinator.

“There aren’t a lot of wetlands between the Rocky Mountains and Central Valley of California,” noted Jack Ray, president of the Utah Waterfowl Association and chair of the Great Salt Lake Alliance. “So the Great Salt Lake tends to serve a critical role in maintaining migratory birds on their trip south and back north again.”

Utah Lake sees its share of migratory birds, too, plus both provide nesting habitat for those seeking longer stays. Great Salt Lake’s Gunnison Island, for instance, is home to one of North America’s largest pelican breeding colonies.

The Salt Lake City team’s work involves setting custom traps for different birds of prey, like large hawks or smaller falcons. Staff also breed mice as bait.

In Provo, Jensen‘s staff often bring out the “pelican gun” — a booming handheld pyrotechnic meant to scare the big, unrushed birds off the airfield.

There are also “bangers,” another percussive single-shot gun, and “screamers,” which emit a loud whistle instead of bang. Real guns, too, but staff at both airports told The Salt Lake Tribune they try to avoid them as much as possible.

No matter what teams do, wildlife are “drawn to come back every time,” Salt Lake City airport wildlife operations manager Alex Blanchard said.

Provo Airport and Salt Lake City International Airport last year reported 325 wildlife strikes to the FAA. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic kept many flights grounded, they reported only 145 wildlife strikes — the lowest count since 2011.

“And so I think the mentality, especially with the regulations that have been put in place, [is to] find a way to work in tandem with it,” Blanchard said, “because you’ll never get rid of it, right?”

Why are both airports on bird habitat?

Before Salt Lake City’s airport became the 9,000-acre, 73-gate hub it is today, it was cheap, flat land — far enough away that there was room to grow, but close enough that it was convenient, with plenty of space for pilots in the 1920s and ’30s to gain altitude without fear of hitting mountains, said Brady Fredrickson, Salt Lake City airport’s director of planning and environment.

The city purchased the original 100-acre parcel of marshy pasture in 1920. About twenty years later, in the 1940s, Provo officials selected wetlands near Utah Lake for an airstrip that would eventually become the state’s second-busiest airport.

In retrospect, airport officials and wildlife advocates admit they weren’t the wisest locations. All manner of birds — songbirds, shorebirds, waterfowl, raptors and more — have been found and chased away. Staff also deal with skunks, coyotes, foxes and “occasionally” deer, Jensen said, who worked at the Salt Lake City airport before he worked in Provo.

Since 1990, wildlife strikes at the Provo and Salt Lake City airports have caused nearly $22 million in damage. During that same time period, Salt Lake City reported 4,098 wildlife strikes, while Provo reported 106.

The vast majority involved birds, including the particularly problematic American white pelican.

Of the 34 American white pelican strikes reported nationwide since 1990, about a third happened in Salt Lake City — including an infamous strike that grounded the then-No. 1 seed in the western conference Utah Jazz just before the end of the 2020-21 regular season.

On March 30, 2021, the team’s aircraft hit a flock during takeoff, and its left engine ingested “multiple birds,” according to FAA bird strike data. That led to engine failure and an emergency landing, causing over $4.1 million in damage.

Mike Conley, the team’s then-starting point guard, said the strike felt like “the plane was breaking apart midair.”

“It was obvious that something was really wrong,” Conley said.

Many thought they were crashing and were saying goodbyes to their families, said Jordan Clarkson, the only Jazz passenger still on the roster.

Despite the pelican’s massive size, the bird that‘s caused the most damage in Salt Lake City is the ferruginous hawk — which happens to be the mascot of former Jazz head coach (and 2021 passenger) Quin Snyder’s new NBA employer in Atlanta.

These hawks have collided with planes here 17 times since 1990, according to the FAA, and two of those strikes caused nearly $3,270,000 in damage.

In Provo, the costliest wildlife strikes involved an unidentified bird on Sept. 2, 2022, that caused $75,000 in damage and a mule deer on Sept. 26, 2001, which caused $8,400.

“Birds are always in the vicinity of the Provo airport,” an official wrote in a report to the FAA on the bird strike. “We are based here and are familiar.”

Battling birds

Before the FAA cracked down after the “Miracle on the Hudson,” Blanchard said, the strategy was to “kill everything” — like in January 1967, when 800 state employees deployed on Salt Lake City airport grounds to kill “a truckload” of rabbits, according to an article from The Salt Lake Tribune.

Now, airport managers do their best to make sure the airport isn’t a place where birds and other animals want to be.

“You want to try and haze and encourage to go to other locations” Jensen said. “As a last resort, if it comes down to a bird, or whatever happens to be on the airfield, or aircraft safety — aircraft safety is going to trump each time.”

Teams cut down prime roosting trees, Jensen said, and trim stretches of dense, wispy reeds so ducks don’t use them for refuge.

Crews in Salt Lake City also cut down tall trees and grow grasses that birds don’t like, Blanchard said. They mitigate insect populations with landscaping choices — slashing flowering plants that attract bugs and in turn rodents, which lure birds of prey seeking a mousy meal.

For the birds that remain — often California gulls, Utah’s heavy, compact and loud state bird — airport managers turn to noise-making guns. They’re useful for any species that “need a little bit more encouragement” to move on, said Jensen.

But the noise they emit only reaches about 1,000 feet into the air, and pelicans, for instance, can soar at altitudes of up to 30,000 feet.

Birds that aren’t thwarted by habitat change or startling sounds are typically trapped, tagged and relocated, Blanchard said. Airport staff custom-built the traps and bait them with live mice, which are enclosed in a protective dome but still entice hawks and other raptors that then become safely ensnared.

The airport breeds the mice themselves, because it‘s “very expensive to keep buying bait mice,” Blanchard said. In a large closet north of the airport, they’re kept in wide Tupperware-like drawers, full of dozens of wriggling rodents, each smaller than a soda can.

These home-grown mice are free of disease, Blanchard added, which can be contracted among wild mice and could harm their human caretakers and the birds they’re baiting.

Next, Blanchard is looking into a product that uses FAA weather radar to help forecast bird, bat and insect flight patterns, based on season and temperature.

The technology isn’t new, but similar systems were too costly. And the battle persists.

Last year, the Salt Lake City airport relocated about 320 birds, and only four returned. Of those four, three had to be relocated again; the fourth was relocated a third time.

If relocation doesn’t work, staff can euthanize repeat offenders.

“Birds are always going to be there, because you’re not going to move the Great Salt Lake or its wetlands,” Ray said, “and the airport‘s not moving.”

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