Birds eggs destroyed over Belfast City Airport plane fears
20.05.08
Bird eggs are being destroyed at Victoria Park in east Belfast by he Environment and Heritage Service over fears that the hatchlings could affect flights at Belfast City Airport, the BBC reports. The Canadian and greylag geese eggs nesting in the park part of which runs alongside the runway of the airport,are being pricked then dipped in oil to kill the developing chicks.
John Milburne, of the EHS, told the news website that, while they did not relish it, it had to be done for air safety reasons as the geese could pose a real risk to aircraft. He said: ‘I was talking to a representative of the airport just this morning and he told me there were 16 bird-strikes last year.'
‘They were reasonably inconsequential in that smaller birds hit the airframe of planes, but if we had birds being ingested into jet engines, particularly birds the size of a swan or a goose, then you would have a potential catastrophe on your hands. We've got to deter the birds from actually being there, that's the problem, or increasing in numbers, and this seems to be the only known method of doing that.’
Mr Milburne said the geese are descended from birds which have escaped from captivity in Northern Ireland. He told the BBC: ‘Naturally occurring populations of those species only come here in the winter time and they don't breed here. These particular birds at the airport are feral birds and they're breeding there and that's what's causing the problem.’
He said destroying the eggs was the most humane way of reducing the birds' numbers, adding: ‘ 'We are really talking about doing this quite early in the development of the embryo in the egg and in some cases before the egg has even started to develop.'
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