Airport construction and the impact on the Environment.

              I am one who enjoys the convenience of living twenty minutes drive from the major airport in the city I’m currently living in. However, how much did we have to sacrifice for this convenience? How much did this impact the environment? From a planning stage, environmental impact brought up. Wildlife strikes with aircrafts have been a continuous problem in Aviation.

Deforestation for airport constructing is a definite negative impact to the environment. The destruction of wildlife habitats, displacing wildlife due to the removal of their food and water, and also loss of fertile land are a few negative environmental impacts. Also with daily airport operations, there will be an increase in carbon emissions, noise pollution and a decrease in air quality.

The above image is of an American Airlines aircraft after hitting a deer during takeoff from an airport in North Carolina. Fuel was seen spraying from the right wing. The plane had to make an emergency landing, luckily nobody was hurt. From 1990 to 2019, 1,210 civil aircraft were involved with collisions with deer and in the last twenty five years deer strikes have cost the industry almost $60 million.


        We may never be able to completing get rid of wildlife at or near airports but some ways to mitigating wildlife attraction to airports and surrounding areas will help reduce the risk of wildlife strikes. Also aiding with this is airports installing avian radars, auditory repellents, and well maintained chain-linked fences. Another major factor is airport drainage and removing settled water in and around the airport to reduce the attraction of wildlife.

I believe airport operations will always have some negative impacts on the environment. Trees will almost always need to be removed and wildlife will almost always need to be displaced but while we continue to destroy some wildlife habitats for the purpose of erecting and/or expanding airports, I still appreciate getting to the airport in twenty minutes.

 

References

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/plane-makes-emergency-landing-hitting-deer-45529333

https://www.faa.gov/airports/airport_safety/wildlife/management

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/reports/Wildlife%20Damage%20Management%20Technical%20Series/Wildlife-at-Airports-WDM-Technical-Series.pdf#:~:text=Collisions%20between%20aircraft%20and%20wildlife%20%28wildlife%20strikes%29%20are,strikes%20are%20not%20only%20numerous%2C%20but%20also%20costly.

WC 323.

 

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