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20 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSIONS AND INFORMATION NEEDS The use of harassment, repellent, and deterrent techniques is an important component of integrated wildlife damage management programs at airports. Nonlethal techniques to reduce human-wildlife conflicts, including bird collisions with aircraft, are generally more acceptable to the public than lethal techniques (e.g., population control). However, it must be recognized that most harassment, repellent, and deter- rent techniques have only limited effectiveness in reducing bird use of specific areas. The limited efficacy is inherently grounded in ecological principles including predation, risk, foraging, and distribution theories, as well as territorial and neophobic behavior, among others. These techniques and principles must be considered in the context of an integrated management program that should include aspects of resource (e.g., food and habitat) distribution at large spatial scales, as well as monitoring program efficacy. Considerable time and financial effort is expended on reducing bird and other wildlife presence on airports. How- ever, these efforts often are not quantified or only partially quantified. Spending additional time to collect and sum- marize data in a systematic fashion on effort and resources expended and bird response to control efforts would allow airports to conduct bird control programs in an adaptive resource management framework. This approach would help airport managers and biologists to make informed deci- sions on the effectiveness of techniques and to conduct basic economic analysis that supports program operations most likely to achieve airport goals. Additionally, there is need to develop criteria for data collection to assess the efficacy of tools and techniques to reduce bird use of airports. Models from these data could be developed to inform airport biolo- gists and used as guidance for conduct of more rigorous sci- entific experiments. Interpretation and inference of a majority of research con- ducted on avian harassment, repellent, and deterrent tech- niques were limited by experimental design, notably lack of replication and inclusion of reference sites or populations. A number of other studies were conducted in captive situations that may not reflect bird responses in free-ranging situations. It is evident that advances in our understanding of the effec- tiveness of these techniques for reducing bird use of airports and other areas will require more rigorous experimental designs at spatial scales relevant to ultimate airport appli- cations. Once efficacies of individual techniques are estab- lished, a second suite of experiments that integrates multiple techniques to assess their efficacy in combination will be required. Finally, and most important, greater emphasis needs to be placed on the underlying ecological principles that are associated with the desired avian responses to deter- rent techniques. Once understood, the ecological principles that have previously resulted in the limited effectiveness of harassment, deterrent, and repellent techniques can be used to modify these techniques and maximize their effectiveness to further reduce bird collisions with aircraft. Many of these techniques are currently being employed by airport biologists and personnel but have not been evaluated using rigorous experimental designs. Based on qualitative assessments, several of these techniques appear to be effec- tive in dispersing birds. To better understand the potential efficacy of these techniques, a survey of select airports could be performed that requests information on specific tech- niques employed, characteristics of these techniques, and estimated efficacy. This survey could be analyzed to provide a rank order list of potentially viable techniques and meth- ods. This list could be used to help prioritize future research and maximize effectiveness of limited research funds. In addition, a comprehensive management program to minimize bird use of airports will require improved under- standing of other aspects of management, including effects of habitat alterations on bird use and viability of lethal control alone or in combination with other techniques. Future syn- theses or reports of these areas of management, integrated with this synthesis, will provide airport wildlife biologists and personnel performing control measures a more thorough and comprehensive framework to improve the effectiveness of management programs.
