Our Wild Lives
Our Wild Lives takes listeners into the heart of wildlife conservation, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. Each episode dives into the wild lives of diverse species, explores complex ecosystems, and unpacks the urgent issues facing wildlife conservation.
Our Wild Lives
When Wildlife and Aviation Collide
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Richard Dolbeer has spent his career trying to strike out airplane collisions on birds–his pitch for a solution has always been to support management action with good science.
In this episode of “Our Wild Lives,” host Katie Perkins sits down to learn about Dolbeer’s storied career. From reducing agricultural conflicts with the Bye-Bye Blackbird Committee to sorting through the wreckage of the “Miracle on the Hudson” for ‘snarge,’ the stories he tells are wild to say the least.
At 80 years old and 50 years of TWS membership, he still has no plans to retire. He continues to research and develop ways to keep wildlife and people safe on the runways and in the skies.
“Our Wild Lives” is The Wildlife Society’s weekly podcast, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts, Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. New episodes are released weekly wherever you get your podcasts.
Further reading:
Richard Dolbeer’s memoir “A Life on the Wild Side” - https://a.co/d/0fK9TgAf
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Katie Perkins: [00:00:00] So picture this, you've just walked down the aisle to seat 27E. The seatbelt sign is on, jet engines start to roar, and your plane begins to speed down the runway. Have you been here before?
When you look out your window, what do you see? Maybe grassy fields, the tarmac, a flash of white wings? Well, here's something most of us don't think about in that moment. Since the 1990s, there have been more than 330,000 recorded wildlife aircraft strikes. This is data we have, thanks in large part to today's guest, Richard Dolbeer.
From studying snowshoe hares in the Rockies to managing blackbirds in farm country, Richard's career took a turn in the late 1980s, right as recovering bird populations, new jet engine technology and protections under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act began reshaping the risks in our skies. He played a key role in building the FAA [00:01:00] strike database. Led groundbreaking work at John F. Kennedy International Airport and even assisted in the investigation of a certain emergency landing in the Hudson River. Keep on listening to learn more about Richard's journey and how his career changed the way we think about birds, planes, and the shared airspace between them.
I am Katie Perkins. This is the Our Wild Lives podcast brought to you by The Wildlife Society.
Richard, thanks for being with us today. I wanna take us all the way back to the beginning. You were destined to be a medical doctor and ended up being a wildlife biologist your entire career. How did that happen? How did you get your start?
Richard Dolbeer: Well, I was, first of all, I was good in math and science [00:02:00] when I was in, in, school, in high school, and I loved biology and, uh, peopel just advised me, well, you should go into medicine. And you've gotta remember this was in the 19 early 1960s and, wildlife biology was, a fairly strange profession at that time, most people didn't even know the word ecology, what it meant. And so I, decided I would go to medical school. And so I enrolled in college and went, uh, through the pre-med program with all the courses you need for that. But I always had in the back of my mind that was not really what I wanted to do. And I noticed my, classmates who were, in pre-med as well as I, they seemed to have a lot more passion for, uh, medicine than I did. And, anyway, in my, between my junior and [00:03:00] senior year, I just had this epiphany that, you know, that's, I don't want to be a medical doctor. And, I was engaged to, a woman, a young that I've known since high school. She was very supportive of that as well. And I always had grown up in, in, nature uh, uh, and had hunted and fish as a child and spent a lot of time in the woods. And I particularly enjoyed, or I particularly, was always curious about populations of animals and, you know, why do you have an abundance of this species and not an abundance of that species? And so this sort of all came together and I decided I was gonna pursue a career. And, and it wasn't even ecology was just a new term back then, but in some area of environmental science or wildlife. And my mother was very upset about that, I might [00:04:00] add, because she said, how are you gonna make a living in this, field?
And, and she, and she literally said, by the way, what does that word ecology even mean? You and,how are you gonna support a wife and a family someday? But anyway, I, you know, knew that's what I wanted to do. And another thing that was very important, was, I might point out is Rachel Carson. She published her books Silent Spring in the, in 1963, the year I graduated from high school. I read that book, and because I had this interest in nature, you know, I had witnessed the disappearance of, bald eagles and so many wildlife species were in real decline. And, it was such a debate about, you know, what was the influence of pesticides and were these really the one responsible for these population declines and so on. [00:05:00] And that really solidified my interest in this field. So I went to the University of Tennessee for a, uh, my master's degree. My major professor there was Dr. James Tanner. And the neat thing about Dr. Tanner was first, two things, he was a an authority on population dynamics and had written a textbook on it. But he was, he had done the definitive study on the ivory-billed woodpecker the 1930s and studied their population in Louisiana which had, subsequently gone extinct. And so, we had a, a common interest there in population dynamics and, I really flourished under him and learned so much. He wanted me to stay at Tennessee, for my PhD degree, but I realized and my wife realized that, it would be good to get into another ecosystem [00:06:00] and um, you know, broaden our experience. If I'm gonna be a wildlife biologist,I need to, see other ecosystems.
So we, applied to several schools out in the Western US and I hit the jackpot when I, was offered a, research assistantship at Colorado State University, in their Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, to do a study on the population dynamics of snowshoe hares in the high elevations of the Rockies.
And so that's what I did. And it was a very difficult, rigorous program academically, but it was also very rigorous program, physically.
Katie Perkins: No, I'm sure.
Richard Dolbeer: I was, working at 11,000 feet, in the sub alpine zone, six feet of snow and, hauling traps all over the place. And, uh, did a three year study on the snowshoe hare and handled over, 2000 [00:07:00] snowshoe hares, that I
Katie Perkins: Wow.
Richard Dolbeer: live trapped during that 3 year period. And the neat thing about that, experience, which sort of I think set the tone for my, career was, it was applied research. And by that I mean I was, hired by the Colorado Division of Wildlife to do this study. And they wanted information on, should they have a hunting season on snowshoe hares and when should the hunting season be and what should be the limit and that kind of thing. And my study, answered those questions. It was a population dynamic study where I was, determining the birth rate, how many young were born each year, and what their, mortality rate was and how the young dispersed and all these things.
And I put it together into a population dynamics model and on the basis of that, made recommendations to the state. When I graduated the very week I defended my PhD [00:08:00] dissertation, three and a half years after I'd started the work there, the Denver Post had an article on my research and the uh, the state Wildlife Commission had accepted my recommendations for an expanded hunting season.
And so, you know, my career since then, which we can get into. But just to sort of, summarize in a way, I think I've had a, a knack of doing research that has practical implications. um, it's just been a great adventure.
Katie Perkins: Yeah. Uh, what's something that people might not know about snowshoe hares having spent so much time with them? Like, are there any little quirks or, you know, characteristics that you find kind of interesting?
Richard Dolbeer: Well, one of the things that's very interesting about hares, as opposed to rabbits is, hares when they, well, they breed like rabbits, let's say. Now
Katie Perkins: Um.
Richard Dolbeer: No, they [00:09:00] have a very high reproductive rate. And, one of the interesting things was that I found they had three litters in this sub alpine zone. Snow didn't melt away until the middle of June, and then you get into late September and you're starting to get snow on the ground again. So they have a very narrow period to reproduce, and they, they have three litters and the first litter born early June, the second letter in July. And then not all, but about a third of the, uh, females had a third litter in, in early August. And,and the way they could do that was the young had a very rapid, you know, the hares are, are, are born,somewhat,precocious, able to move around and as opposed to rabbits that are in a nest and pretty helpless for the first two weeks of life or so. And so, you know, they, they would, give birth to, to young and then, mate [00:10:00] immediately and then 35 days later have another litter, and then
Katie Perkins: Wow.
Richard Dolbeer: 35 days later have another litter. And I, I figured that all out and, uh, you know, made a population model of that. And it, was pretty, interesting. You know, you would have like, if you had a hundred females, a hundred males in a population, at the start of the breeding season in May, by August, that population would've grown to about 700, snowshoe hares.
Katie Perkins: Wow.
Richard Dolbeer: So then you had a mortality rate of 500, to bring the population back to the 200. And this would be in like a square mile area of spruce fur forest. So you know, they produce a lot of young and they have a lot high mortality rate they're, you know, very fundamental prey species for Lynx and,many other, predators, both avian and mammalian. And so they play a very important role in the, uh, [00:11:00] boreal ecosystem, as a prey source. And so that's a neat thing about, snowshoe hares.
Katie Perkins: Awesome. So, after that your career started going into more of the avian space. So can you tell us about that?
Richard Dolbeer: Sure. Um, you know, when I was finishing up my, PhD program at Colorado State, I, uh, a phone call from man in, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center named John Seubert. And he said, he had heard about me and he wanted to hire me to run a field station in this place I'd never heard of called Sandusky, Ohio. And it was a field station that was set up to study wildlife conflicts with agriculture, particularly migratory birds and black birds was being the main, focus. And, um, he wanted me to, to, to run this, small field station or hire me to do that. Of course I had no [00:12:00] supervisory experience or I was pretty naive, uh, there.
But I said, this sounds like a really interesting, job opportunity. But I might add, my wife and I were very, suspect because that was a time, this is 1972. And there was nothing but bad news coming out of Ohio and we're living out in Colorado where, you know, it was. everything was really cool back then, especially. You had John Denver singing Rocky Mountain High and all that. But it was a, um, there was nothing but bad news coming out of Ohio it seemed like. There was the Cuyahoga River, which is in Cleveland, it caught on fire and, the Lake Erie, that you weren't supposed to eat the fish out of the lake because of the high levels of pollution you know, going on.
And it just seemed like it wasn't a very nice place to move to, but we decided to move there, uh, to Sandusky which [00:13:00] is on Lake Erie and run this field station. After we were there just a few months, we realized this is a really neat place and I'm still here 53 years later. I'm,
Katie Perkins: Amazing.
Richard Dolbeer: in, I live on the shores of Lake Erie. But I ran a, field station we had, which was located, co-located at a NASA research center, called Plum Brook Station, which is a part of Glen Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. And it was a 6,000 acre fenced in high security area and we could do all kinds of research within that facility 'cause it was mainly open, land. And our main mission at that time was, bird damage to agricultural crops, particularly corn and oats and, but also looking at bird damage to fruit crops, like blueberries and cherries and, and, um, we just did [00:14:00] a lot of interesting research on that, over a number of years. it, it, it paid dividends and we pretty much solved the, the problem. And oh, I might add, an interesting part of it. The main, supporter of our research and, you know, if you're gonna do research, you've gotta have somebody that's supporting it.
Katie Perkins: Mm-hmm.
Richard Dolbeer: Was a group in Ohio, it wasn't just in Ohio, but they were headquartered in Ohio called the Bye Bye Blackbird Committee. The Bye Bye Blackbird committee was incorporated as, as an organization of farmers who were very concerned about blackbird damage to their crops, and they lobbied Congress and, and got funds for us to do work. And, we also worked with chemical companies that, uh, you know, wanted to provide, repellents and test repellents and so on, and they provided funding. But this, bye-bye blackbird committee [00:15:00] was the, principal supporter of what we did. And we would have a meeting every December in Columbus, Ohio, once I arrived in Ohio. And I would have to stand up and present to them, you know, what we've accomplished during the year.
And, uh, so it kept our feet to the fire, so to speak. And, these were no, no nonsense farmers who wanted, you know, solutions and so that was a great experience. But, now if you transition from that, during the late 1980s is blackbird populations were declining and farmers were using different hybrids of corn, which were more resistant to damage and, uh, better scaring techniques.
It was sort of a, a project that had run its course. And so I was looking for other opportunities for research and because I had developeda reputation of solving problems, I started getting phone calls from airports. [00:16:00] And airports were saying, Richard, uh, we've got all these geese on our airport and we never used to see geese on our airport.
You know, what can we do about 'em? And, you know, how do, how do we handle that with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and all these questions. And this was a cool thing about that, is that um, you know, I started my career and was interested in, in, population dynamics of species. In the North America, large bird species were at all time lows. And, you know, almost some, almost on the verge of extinction. And because of Rachel Carson and the, and the environmental, programs that were implemented in the late 1960s and early 1970s, like the Endangered Species Act and EPA being created, DDT being banned, the National Wildlife Refuge System quadrupled in size. So many [00:17:00] beneficial things for wildlife happened during that three or four year magical period from about 1969 to 1973. And so by the late 1980s, all these populations were starting to recover. And now they were, showing up at airports and one of the reasons they like to show up at airports is airports have lots of open space and, and there's nobody out on the airfield, except, you know, a few operational people. And so, I was getting calls about that and, saw this as I knew this was gonna be a big deal, just instinctively, and I, I like to tell people I jumped on it like I flea on a Tennessee hound dog. I just saw this as, uh, you know, it was gonna be a big deal. And it turned out it was. And here I am,this was the late 1980s and here I am, 80 years old and I'm still working on this [00:18:00] project and have done a lot of, great things, I think, and not just me, but our team working on it.
So, and we made this big transition in the late 1980s from working on wildlife conflicts with agriculture to wildlife conflicts with aviation. And I was successful in getting, funding from the Federal Aviation Administration and from the military and from other sources, to, run this program which is still ongoing here in, uh, at Sandusky, Ohio at the field station. So that's sort of the broad, picture of my career, I guess.
Katie Perkins: Yeah, so let's get more into bird strikes because you know, there are some really monumental things in history that have happened that were causes of, you know, planes hitting birds. Why are they so prevalent and so common?
Richard Dolbeer: It's a very complex issue 'cause there's so [00:19:00] many variables to deal with wildlife and aviation. First of all, you have many different types of aircraft. You have, you know, small, propeller driven aircraft, piston powered, you have helicopters. You have, transport jets with high, bypass, turbo fan engines. And then you have your military, aircraft, which, can be very vulnerable and very many different types of military aircraft. So you're dealing with a lot of different aircraft types that have different vulnerabilities. And then you're dealing with, a myriad of wildlife species, you know, each which has different migration patterns and body masses and behavioral responses to feeding habits. And then all these birds, the vast majority of these birds are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which means, you know, an airport just can't go out and start shooting birds on the airport, [00:20:00] or destroying nests and all. Everything has to be justified. So it's a complicated issue. And one of the things that, has made it more complicated is that the aircraft, particularly transport aircraft that take people, you know, passengers, like the Boeing 737. They all, uh, in the 1980s they were transitioning to high bypass, turbo fan powered, jet engines.
And, these engines have large intakes. They're very powerful and, uh, they can be quite vulnerable to birds because a bird doesn't have to be just lined up with the engine to be sucked in. They, these bring in air, you know, like a big vacuum cleaner. And so, you know, a bird gets close to that engine and it's gonna go into the engine. And so, all of these factors, uh, sort of interacted to, to make this an issue. And one other [00:21:00] thing about that is that not only were these wildlife populations increasing, like Canada geese and Ospreys or so on. But because of, uh a change I believe in the environmental ethics in America, because of this change in environmental ethics, these species were adapting to live around humans. During the 1970s we really saw a change in attitudes towards wildlife and, uh, much less illegal, take in shooting of animals and much more, uh, accommodating them. So not only did we have all these populations increasing. But they were, becoming very accustomed to being around humans and to the point where you would have Canada geese nesting on airports, you know, right by the runway. And you'd have osprey building nest on towers at the airport with, loud planes going by 24 hours a day.
You know, they adapted to that. And so this [00:22:00] was another, aspect that made, this, whole issue of, birds and aviation, more of a, of a problem.
Katie Perkins: So how did you begin to tackle that? To keep wildlife safe, keep people safe, reduce strikes? What was your process?
Richard Dolbeer: Okay, Well, the, the breakthrough came, for this in 1991, when I was first getting involved, I had been contacted by, John F. Kennedy International Airport, the management there to come in and help them resolve a problem with gulls they had. And JFK Airport is located right next to, Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which it's a part of the National Park Service and Gateway National Recreation Area. And you, you could not create a more conflicted, situation than that where you've got, you know, the Park Service whose mission is to preserve and protect. And you've got the [00:23:00] airport whose mission is to provide safe travel and nowhere more than JFK, which is sort of our flagship, airport in the US for international, travel. Um, I was called in to try to, solve this problem of a bit large, laughing gull nesting colony next to the airport in Jamaica Bay. I could write a book about the, the whole process. But the basic thing was after a couple of years, of looking at the problem in 1989 and 90, thatthe only solution was that, uh, colony either had to be removed or it had to be trained. The birds in it had to be trained not to fly over the airport. And there was a colony of over over 5,000 nests of laughing gulls. And so I designed a program in 1991, which was very audacious. And, um, you know, I've had a reputation [00:24:00] of sticking my neck out, at times. And, sticking your neck out, you know, there's two things that can happen.
You can get your head chopped off, or you can see things better than other people do and make real progress. So we set up a program in the summer of 1991, at JFK, and had permits from the Fish and Wildlife Service to do this. And we had, permits from the city of New York to use firearms. And it was a very complicated process. But in that summer of 19 91. Our USDA Wildlife Services biologist that I was working with, uh, I was the leader of this as the research leader and, we had a lot of our operational people involved. But, that summer we shot, with shotguns using steelshot. We shot 15,000 gulls that were [00:25:00] attempting to fly over JFK airport. We stood along the south side of the airport. You know, we wore blaze orange,didn't try to, it wasn't like hunting, we wanted the birds to see us and, but we shot 15,000 gulls. And you can imagine the headlines that came out of that. And, um, I had done my homework ahead of time and I, you know, in my background in population dynamics, I had, come up with estimates of the number of laughing gulls on the, east coast of the US and, and what the removal of, didn't know how many we were gonna remove when we started the program and we were shocked that we removed that many.
But was able to show the population dynamics models that our shooting program, while it was going to, reduce, the strikes at JFK airport, it was not going to impact the regional population of laughing [00:26:00] gulls. And that actually was verified as the years went by, after that shoot.
And the shooting program is by the way, still going on today. Which is how many years since then? 35 years later, it's still going on much less, mortality than when we started it. But the population of laughing goals along the East Coast continued to increase after our shooting program. So we were able to show that we were not impacting the regional population. But what we did show was that we had a dramatic reduction in the number of strikes with laughing gulls at JFK Airport. Laura Francoeur, who is the wildlife biologist for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and a member of The Wildlife Society. Laura has said, publicly, uh, you know, that this shooting program that I designed and implemented back in 1991 is the most effective [00:27:00] program they've ever had at Kennedy Airport for managing the, bird strike problem. And, so, but here's the thing, with that program, you know, at that point, and this is something I'm very proud of,. At that point in 1990, 91, there were virtually no wildlife biologists working at any airports in the US. You had, some of their airport operations, people who might have a little training in wildlife biology, uh, that, you know, were sort of put in charge of their program, but there were no professional biologists on airports. I argued starting in, 1990, 91, that airports needed to have professional biologists as part of their team. And the manager of the air site at JFK Airport, whose name was Jack Gardner, he was very, well respected within the aviation community and was [00:28:00] active in the American Association of Airport Executives, which is the professional organization that, airport managers belong to. He went out and started promoting that, airports need to have professional biologists. And as a result of that, now virtually every certificated airport in the US, has, which, and there's 500 of them, but almost all of those, especially maybe some of the smaller ones not, but almost all of the larger ones anyway, a hundred percent. They have a professional wildlife biologist on their staff, and many of them, like Chicago Hare and Kennedy Airport, they have three or four biologists working on their staff just devoted to managing, bird strikes and, and other wildlife strikes. And so, you know, to be a part of the, initiation of that,is, is very satisfying to me,to, because it all started with the, [00:29:00] shooting of 15,000 gulls at JFK Airport.
Katie Perkins: That's so fascinating. I never would've imagined that that was even an option for a wildlife career and that like, you know, it is such a big problem that you do need people that know how to deal with that.
Richard Dolbeer: Oh absolutely. You've gotta,be able to, know, and no, none of these birds can be removed without a permit. You know, Fish and Wildlife Service,depredation permit and plus a state permits. And, uh, you know, it has to be justified. And yeah. But I do wanna emphasize one thing is that, this was an extreme and a very unusual situation there with the, dealing with the park service. And, our preference was we wanted to go out and destroy the nest and just make the birds leave the area, and that we did not get permission to do that. And so we resorted to the shooting, aspect of it.
But the, the main thing I want to emphasize, I don't wanna leave, uh, [00:30:00] uh, the audience, thinking this is our first choice is lethal control. It's actually our last choice. And, um, at airports, what these professional biologists do is basic wildlife management in reverse you could, you should say. We try to make the airport environment as sterile as possible where the birds aren't attracted to the airport in the first place. And then when, birds do come to the airport. Have a, immediate response to non lethally disperse them away using pyrotechnics and dogs and,all the traditional, scare techniques forwildlife. And then only lethal control is a last resort and only directed at those species that are not, uh, you know, high profile or in species of concern and so on. Like, you know, we don't go out and shoot bald eagles, there, although we do on occasion [00:31:00] when I say we, the people working at these airports do on occasion, get permission to remove nests that are right next to the airport where the birds will nest somewhere else. But lethal control is the, last resort but in this particular case, it was the last resort and it had spectacular results and it resulted in a lot of attention being brought to this whole issue, emerging issue at that time of wildlife and, and aviation. And, and so it was just really neat to be on the ground floor of that, I guess.
Katie Perkins: Yeah, I think one of the most noteworthy bird strike incidents that most people know about is the Miracle on the Hudson, and you were involved in that. So can you tell us like what do you remember when you got that call and what followed?
Richard Dolbeer: Well, it was, um, you know, it was on a cold, January afternoon. And, I have a, amazing story to tell about that at. At noontime on that day, I gave a talk to a [00:32:00] Rotary Club in Sandusky, Ohio and I talked about bird strikes. They wanted a talk. And this was 2009. And in my talk, I emphasized the danger of Canada geese. And I actually said in that talk, I said, we're going to have an a, aircraft go down because of Canada geese at some time because of the flocking behavior and all. I said that on at noon on that day. So then about 4:30, my phone starts going off, you know, I started getting phone calls. But I had just retired full-time, and I had just stepped down as the chairperson of Bird Strike Committee USA, so I was, you know, well known as the expert in this field.
So I started getting phone calls from media, all over wanting, uh, information. And in fact, that night, that very night, I ended up one of the [00:33:00] national news media, had office in Cleveland, Ohio. I went over to my daughter's house who lives in Cleveland, and met them there like at 9 or 10 o'clock at night.
And they interviewed me with my grandchildren watching. I couldn't give them specifics about that accident at that time, other than we knew it was a miracle. And we knew Canada geese, or we suspected Canada geese were involved, but I, you know, they just wanted to interview on the overall problem with bird strikes and what we were doing about it and all. So, then I spent a week,once they pulled the aircraft out of the water and, and they had, and one of the engines came off when it landed in the Hudson River and was in 40 feet of water and they had to go down and retrieve it, but they took the two engines to the General Electric plant in Cincinnati, Ohio where the engines [00:34:00] were disassembled to find out exactly why they had failed, you know, what components,on them, and to, to determine, exactly what species had caused the accident. So I spent a week in Cincinnati, the week following the accident. As the mechanics disassembled the two engines, I would remove the bird remains that were in them and, you know, put them in, plastic bags and label them and then send them to the Smithsonian Feather Lab in Washington, DC run by Carla Dove where they would, uh, identify, the remains. And, what we found from that, which was very interesting, is that the microscopic, feather analysis, looking at the downy barbels on the base of the feathers and all they could determine it was a, a goose, branta genus. But that's as [00:35:00] far as they could go then. And, and by the way, you could have, Canada geese, and, snow geese and cormorants are, there were several species that could have been involved and, but they identified it as brant. And the interesting thing there was that the Canada goose, weighs seven to eight pounds. The brant, Atlantic brant, which is a sm very small goose that breeds way up in, in the Arctic, it only weighs, two to three pounds, and the engines are supposed to be certified to withstand a bird. They, they, at least not have an uncontained failure if it's a bird that's under three pound, under four pounds, I think. So, you know, you can imagine General Electric did not want that bird to be a brant.
Katie Perkins: Yeah.
Richard Dolbeer: But it was all, you know, high security, doing these [00:36:00] removal of feathers and everything. I was, even when I would go to the bathroom, I'd have to be escorted by someone, you know, that just to uh, ensure I wasn't bringing in some odd feathers or something. But anyway, it turned out it was Canada geese, with the mitochondrial DNA analysis showed that it was Canada geese for sure. And further than that, beyond that, the Smithsonian was able to stable isotope analysis and of hydrogen and show that, because of the ratio of hydrogen one and hydrogen two, that these were not resident geese of the New York City area, but they were migratory geese probably from Newfoundland. And so that was a critical piece of data for that. But anyway, so that was that was quite a, um, an event and it truly was a miracle. I mean, that, you know, you had this, veteran captain Sullenberger, who [00:37:00] was very skilled. It happened to be in the afternoon. It was clear, and he just happened to have this clear path and landed the plane perfectly in the Hudson River. And not only that, it was at, four o'clock in the afternoon and it was when the ferries were commuting, uh, taking, commuters back and forth across the Hudson River from New York City to, New Jersey. And a ferry was able to pull up to the aircraft within a minute of it landing in the water you know, rescue all the passengers.
And, if that plane had landed out in Lake Erie or the Atlantic Ocean or, you know, or even even worse, you know, um, didn't have a water area of the land, everyone would've died. And, so it really was a, a Miracle on the Hudson.
Katie Perkins: It's just a fascinating story and it's really amazing that they're able to track it down to, you know, what kind of bird it was and it was [00:38:00] migratory, you know? That's fascinating. Is there any way that, you know, things like that can be prevented? Like what kind of technology is there to warn birds, to warn pilots, that kind of thing?
Richard Dolbeer: Well, that's an area I'm working on very, rigorously at this very moment. Um, you know, bird strikes can be divided into two groups, really. There's a dichotomy. We've talked about airports and, you know, we want to keep birds away from aircraft when they're landing or taking off on the runways. And you do that by traditional wildlife management techniques, you know, wildlife biologists using habitat management and all the, various tools to keep the birds away. But once you get off the airport and you're climbing or your one approach coming into the airport, those techniques they're not, usable.
This happened, like the miracle on the Hudson happened at, about four and a half miles from the [00:39:00] airport, and they were at 2,800 feet elevation above the ground. And, so nothing wildlife management wise would solve that problem. The only thing that's gonna solve that type of a, an event is using bird detecting radar and providing real time warnings to the flight crews. And that's an area that I'm working on right now, as far as, trying to get, programs developed that will allow this. And, I'm not a radar expert, you know, I'm a biologist, but, what I do, and this backs up to another one of, I think one of my, highest achievements is the development of the National Wildlife Strike database. Which relates back to, what can we do to prevent strikes, like with the Miracle on the Hudson? Uh, when I started my work with airports in aviation in the early [00:40:00] 1990, say. There was no systematic collection of any data on how often these bird strikes happened, what species were involved, what part of the aircraft was struck and damaged, what phase of flight the strike event occurred in, the height above ground level of the plane, the speed of the aircraft, time of day and airport and so on. And so I started lobbying the FAA said, look, you know, we can't solve a pro. They, they were coming to me and saying, we want you to help us solve this problem. And I said, we cannot solve a problem that we don't understand. And this is particularly true when we're dealing with migratory birds that are protected by international law. You know, we've got to have information to define this problem. And so, finally in 1994, the FAA came to me and said, would you develop, and manage a national [00:41:00] wildlife strike database? And I said, absolutely. We'll do that. And, and they were collecting data on strikes.
They had a form that people could fill out, but it wasn't put into a database and it wasn't being analyzed. So anyway, we developed that database in Sandusky, Ohio at our field station, and we started with what data the FAA had, it wasn't that good at that point. And we've managed that database ever since. Right at this very moment, and now we have over, 330,000 strike events in the database. 330,000. It involves over 800 species of wildlife, 650 something species of birds. And then, terrestrial mammals like deer and coyotes, and then, bats, and then reptiles like, alligators, iguanas, and big [00:42:00] snakes and turtles, snapping turtles, and so on are in there, but we have over 330,000 and, and this database is used worldwide and it provides the scientific foundation for, managing wildlife in aviation at airports. And, particularly birds make up about 96% of the strike events in the database. And so I'm very proud of that achievement.
And, the point I wanna make with that, tying back to the Miracle on the Hudson is that, one, one of the things our database is, has shown is that we have a gap in our ability to mitigate, or lessen the risk of strikes. And it relates to these strikes that are occurring off airport during climb or on approach to an airport like the Miracle on the Hudson. And t he only way those are gonna be solved, I believe, or and mitigated against, is providing real [00:43:00] time, warnings to flight crews. And there's a precedent for this with wind shear, which is, you know, when wind, uh, during thunderstorms and all where you can have severe downdrafts of wind. That was a major, cause of accidents with aviation back in the 1980's and seventies and eighties. And they developed wind shear detecting radar, and that was installed on airports and aircraft starting in the mid 1990s. And we haven't had a wind shear incident that's been resulted in any fatality since then. And so I think that's the big frontier I see right now with our efforts to mitigate bird strikes and to make safer skies for all who fly. Is that, for these strike events that are occurring off airport during approach and climb means using radar bird, detecting radar to alert pilots to these uh, birds.
[00:44:00] So that's what I'm working on right now is that, event and, uh, that, issue and hopefully, before my career is over, we'll see some positive action in that area.
Katie Perkins: Yeah. So you and New York have had many run-ins throughout your career. Another really important part of your career was helping after 9/11. Could you tell us a little bit about that and what you did in the wildlife conflict there?
Richard Dolbeer: Sure. You know, I, because I had been, working at New York City with dealing with gulls and aviation. After 9/11, happened they just made a decision to take all of the debris from the World Trade Center and take it out to Staten Island to a landfill fresh kills landfill on Staten Island, which was the largest landfill in the world. And by chance, just by coincidence, it had just been closed in the preceding year as a landfill because it had gotten so [00:45:00] large and now they were, shipping the garbage to other places. But up, up until then, during the 1970s and eighties it received about 20,000 tons of, of, uh, garbage every day, from New York City.
And it also was a huge feeding grounds for gulls, as you can imagine, all the food waste that was brought in there on a daily basis. And so, when they started bringing the, debris from the World Trade Center out to Staten Island and to the Fresh Kills Landfill and spreading it out on the dirt surface there, gulls who had been for, uh, or three decades using that as a regular feeding grounds where coming in. And this was in the fall, of course, in September. They were coming in, in large numbers and they were interfering with the recovery efforts of human remains. And,as the [00:46:00] workers sorted through all the debris to try to identify victims.
And so, when they first started bringing stuff in there, which was about a week after nine 11, I got a call from, one of our wildlife services biologistsin, USDA biologist, Rich Chipman in New York, state, to come help, design a program to keep the gulls away and also Norway rats. And so, uh, a colleague from our field station, Tom Seamens and I went there, I think got there on a Sunday, and Monday morning we started setting up a program. And that program, lasted for over six months while they were doing all the recovery. Andwe had biologists there, from,a little before sunrise to after sunset, for over six months, keeping the gulls away from, uh, the workers and the, and the you know, the remains.
So it was a very you know, somber assignment for everyone, but [00:47:00] it was very, uh, necessary. and it was a very unusual aspect of wildlife control. And, so, but it was quite successful. And we, our presence there was much appreciated by FBI. It was a huge crime scene, really is what it was.
You know, they wanted to recover as much evidence as they could. And, and so anyway, that was a,a notable, aspect of my career doing that project.
Katie Perkins: So 80 years old, no retirement plans. What is life looking like for you now?
Richard Dolbeer: Well, I, it is looking good for me. I live in Huron, Ohio, but 20 miles south of here I have a farm, I called Bluebird Haven. And, and it's really dedicated to my wife 'cause she was a wonderful naturalist and, loved of the outdoors and she was a teacher. And anyway, I'm very active with my, nature preserve. And I do a lot of wildflower plantings there. [00:48:00] And I have a lot of, environmental education programs, different groups, scout groups and so on camp out there. And, have,a lot of fun out there. So that's what I do in my spare time is, work at my farm, Bluebird Haven.
Katie Perkins: Yeah, so you recently just wrote a new book, A Life on the Wild Side. Can you give us a little sneak peek at anything maybe we didn't talk about here that people can learn more about in your book?
Richard Dolbeer: You know, it was a really, wonderful feeling for me to write this book and sort of put my life into a sequence of events and, I, um, I just feel like, I just had a wonderful career. One thing I didn't talk about earlier is throughout my career, I've also done a lot of work in foreign countries and either with airports, or, back in my agricultural days doing,agricultural wildlife intervention in places like Chad Africa and Senegal, Tanzania, uh, you know, I've been to Nepal, [00:49:00] Thailand, China, all over over 40 countries. And there are two things I'd like to mention real quick. One is that, you know, as a researcher, I learned very early from my major professor James Tanner, the Ivory-billed woodpecker guy. He told me, he said, Richard, if you're gonna be a researcher, there's something you need to know. For every a hundred people, particularly in the wildlife area, for every a hundred people who can go out into the field and collect data, which is the fun part. That's why most people get into wildlife biology.
Um, there's only about 10 of those who can organize that data into meaningful hypotheses and tables and graphs that, you know, makes sense. And he said, I think you're one of those people. He encouraged me to go on for a PhD. And I think that's very true. One of my frustrations as a supervisor over the years has [00:50:00] been, um, you know, you, you have a number of, people in wildlife biology who love to collect the data, but getting them to analyze it and write it up is another thing.
It's just very difficult for a lot of people. But if you're going to be a researcher is, this is a point I wanna make, is that you have a moral obligation to, um, somebody's funding that research, either private sector or public sector, and you have a moral obligation to, to publish that information.
And even if the results turn out negative, sometimes those are the most interesting results you can get because it, it shows that's what you thought was happening, was not happening. So I think, you know, the, the ability to rigorously analyze and write up data is if you're going to be a research scientist, this is critical. And, the other thing is that as a supervisor, it's the backside of that is that you, and I tried to do this as, as well [00:51:00] as I could,as a supervisor. Is you recognize everyone has strengths and weaknesses and everybody wants to do a good job, everybody wants to be recognized for their role and,and whatever organization you're in. And so as a supervisor, I always tried to set up people for success. And by that I mean, I tried to recognize where their strengths and weaknesses were and didn't try to force them to do things that I knew they weren't very good at doing.
And I, and writing is one of those, you know, I had some people who worked for me who were just outstanding in collecting data, and you could trust them, a hundred percent. And they would come up with innovative ideas for how to collect the data and so on. But I knew that, you know, that if I tried to, force them to write that up, they just couldn't do that.
Or they'd be miserable and they wouldn't do a very good job. But they're very valuable people. So often I would be the one who would you know, the, the get everything [00:52:00] written and maybe analyze the data and they would certainly get full credit for everything they did.
But I think trying to force people to do projects or things that they're not good at doing is, is a failure of some supervisors. I think everybody has their talents and we need to recognize and enhance those, abilities for every employee. So those are the last things, I think.