Wildlife in Airport Environments: Chapter 15 Conclusions and Future Directions

Although the management of wildlife at airports has seen great progress in recent decades, wildlife collisions with aircraft continue to pose risks to human safety and economic losses to the aviation industry and military (Allan 2002, Dolbeer 2009). Our understanding of physiological and behavioral responses of wildlife to various types of repellents and harassment techniques has grown tremendously. Substantial inroads have been made in developing and optimizing exclusion devices, particularly for mammals. Research and management have increased considerably in recent years, allowing us to better understand aspects of resource use (e.g., cover, food) by wildlife and the spatial scales at which they operate (Martin et al. 2011), as well as to improve current management strategies. We suggest that these two forms of management-repellents and harassment (e.g., Chapters 2-4) and habitat management (e.g., Chapters 8-11)-should be integrated to reduce hazardous wildlife use of airports. Direct control methods (e.g., hazing) typically work only in the short term; reducing habitat suitability for wildlife at airports will likely enhance long-term efficacy of these techniques