Sudden Impact

The Wildlife Society asks:

Can a 10 pound bird bring down an 80 ton airplaine?

Hell yeah:

When an aircraft and a goose collide, the goose weighs more than an elephant during the instant of collision. This force is enough to cripple an aircraft and can force emergency landings (We all remember the Miracle on the Hudson). Birds colliding with airplanes are not rare events; on average this kind of accident happens almost 20 times a day.

So what to do? Well, for one thing, you can disappear the culprits overnight. But in this case, there is a question as to whether the right culprits were rounded up, or whether that was even a very nice thing to do.

Since The Wildlife Society (on its blog) doesn’t address what seems to be the root cause of the skyrocketing geese populations, let me direct you to this decade-old High Country News story:

“Basically we have created a goose buffet with our grass lawns in parks, yards and golf courses,” says Helen Ross of the Seattle Audubon Society. She points out that geese have abundant nesting sites, no predators, and easy access to their favorite food: freshly cut grass.

Geese are symptomatic of our long-term, poor management of urban ecosystems,” she says.

So we created the problem. Where have I heard this story before?

Anyway, here’s the deal we cosmopolitan nature lovers have with wildlife, be it in Brooklyn or Boulder, Colorado:

Don’t get too close, or I’ll have to kill you. (And that includes my plane!)

3 Responses to “Sudden Impact”

  1. BenSix says:

    Oh, Christ! All those spitfires we wasted in the Battle of Britain, n’ all we needed to do was set loose a few dozen gaggles of geese.

  2. […] Posted by bensix under Games, History, Nature, Species Leave a Comment  Via Keith Kloor, the Wildlife Society explain how a bird can down aircraft… When an aircraft and a goose […]

  3. John Fleck says:

    On the twitter, I tried in 140 characters to lay out the suggestion that we fix the problem by reintroducing wolves wherever we introduce lawns, to kinda balance things out.
    I think, for example, that Albuquerque’s country club would only be enhanced by having a wolf on the prowl. Kinda add to the adventure of a round of golf.

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