Is it by your wisdom that the hawk goes soaring and spreads his wings toward the south?

Is it at your command that the eagle mounts and makes his nest on high?                                                                                                                                                                                                          (Job:  26-27)

It was the shotgun that was largely responsible for the extinction of five North American birds. It was the shotgun which brought the Laughing Gull in the Northeastern United States and the Canada Goose in all the United States to near-extinction a century ago. Today, the shotgun continues to be used at John F. Kennedy International airport (JFK) in New York City and other Port Authority of NY&NJ airports to perpetuate the historical slaughter of migratory, as well as non-migratory birds. (“Port Authority killed 20,000 animals,” NY Post, March 2, 2014)

Is this our gratitude to an animal whom we imitate, and whose perfection of flight across hemispheres remains a mystery?

In 1979, the handsome Laughing Gull made its first appearance in New York State in eighty years by forming a nesting colony in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens, New York, which lies next to JFK airport. As the colony and air travel both increased, so did bird strikes. The airport manager, the Port Authority of NY&NJ, contracted with the US. Department of Agriculture-Wildlife Services (then named Animal Damage Control) in 1991 and implemented an “experimental, interim shooting program” to address the problem of all gull species who overflew into JFK’s prescribed airspace (USDA, “Gull Hazard Reduction Program, JFK”). After some one hundred thousand Laughing Gulls alone shot since 1991, gull strikes were minimalized, and the Laughing Gull colony has been reduced from 7,629 nesting pairs in 1990, to less than two thousand, causing it to be listed as a New York Species of Greatest Conservation Need.

Despite the annual Laughing Gull slaughters (May-October) at JFK, bird strikes from non-gull species have continued to escalate, and the temporary shooting program has expanded to killing scores of other bird species--both on and off-airport. No bird is immune to Wildlife Services’s shooters: from small barn swallows and tree swallows, rare Snowy Owl visitors, the protected and still recovering Osprey, and to the dignified Canada Goose and sublime Mute Swan.

In their comments letter (3/28/1994) to the USDA’s “Draft Environmental Impact Statement, JFK,” the Linnaean Society of New York wrote prophetically “...The proximity of the airport next to a major and fragile wetlands systems and a renowned bird sanctuary of some 330 species of wintering, nesting and migratory birds--a potential problem will always exist....” Last October, 2013, the former coordinator of the USDA’s Airport Wildlife Hazards Program and architect of the shooting program, Richard Dolbeer conceded, “...Management actions at and in the immediate vicinity of airports do little to mitigate the risk of off-airport strikes during departure and takeoff...’new technologies like avian radar should be more vigorously pursued....’ “ (“Those Hazardous Flying Birds,” NY Times, October 17, 2013)

The Port Authority’s Wildlife Hazard Management Plan at JFK and its other airports denies ecological science and relies primarily on a tool of extinction to mitigate potential bird strikes by refusing to incorporate avian radar technology into its bird hazard management plans. Since 2010, the FAA has endorsed, helped fund, and given justification for airport managers to deploy portable avian radar units as part of an integrated plan. Avian radar has no environmental impact on wetlands or nesting species, being the least ecologically disruptive of all mitigation tools in use.

The Port Authority must recognize the natural environment upon which it conducts its business by nurturing an ecologic ethic so that it can protect both those who choose to fly for convenience, and those who must fly to live.  No creation by man can supplant God’s creation.