Posted on 03/01/2006 1:14:25 PM PST by Dashing Dasher
Sacramento County plans to burn down Karl Yuki’s home. (LIE LIE LIE) The Yuki family home is on a 90-acre pear orchard near the Sacramento River north of Sacramento International Airport. “Our family had lived there for quite a while, over 50 years. We were leasing it from the airport,” Yuki explained. The family gave up farming and moved to Lodi about a year ago. Although the house is unoccupied, the orchard remains a home for crows, various small birds and squirrels. Occasionally, coyotes and deer are seen. The airport has plans to transform the orchard into an environment specifically designed to be inhospitable to birds and other wildlife. The primary goal of the transformation is to make wildlife scarce in order to avoid collisions between wildlife and planes at the airport.
The county plans to torch the (UNINHABITED) farm buildings as a training exercise for firefighters. Pear trees will be uprooted and put through a wood chipper. Trees near the farm buildings and growing along the edges of the property will be cut down. A small grove of about 40 oaks adjacent to the orchard will be removed also. The land will be leveled and planted with a “monoculture” of low-growing grass that will be cut and disked periodically. A total of 69 native oaks will disappear. Three environmental groups--the Sierra Club, Friends of the Swainson’s Hawk and the Environmental Council of Sacramento--want to save the oaks. They propose an alternative plan, to remove the pear orchard, retain the oak trees and keep an eye on the result.
The oaks are 1,200 feet from the airport’s west runway and are considered a “wildlife attractant” by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Trees, bushes, ponds and farm crops are examples of wildlife attractants; they provide food, water and cover for wildlife. Oaks provide nest sites, perches and rooting places for birds.
Greg Rowe, senior environmental analyst for the airport, said, “Birds and aircraft don’t mix.” Sacramento International Airport has the highest number of bird strikes in California. Records show that there are five bird strikes per 10,000 flights at Sacramento, but the FAA believes most bird strikes go unreported.
No one has ever been killed by bird strikes at Sacramento, but in 2002 a passenger plane hit a heron during takeoff. The pilot shut down an engine and returned to the airport. The airport appears to be surrounded by wildlife attractants. Rice fields, the Sacramento River and the Yolo bypass create a paradise for waterfowl and wading birds, like herons. And above it all is the Pacific Flyway, a major migratory route for birds. A study at the Sacramento airport found that large flocking birds, like ducks and geese, present the greatest danger because flocks can potentially disable more than one aircraft engine.
In October, FAA officials inspected the airport and issued a “letter of correction” stating that the airport was not in compliance with FAA regulations. Several wildlife attractants were cited, including trees. Rowe said the letter prompted him to include oak trees in the Yuki-orchard removal project.
James Pachl, the attorney representing the environmental groups, contends that “most of their problems are with waterfowl. If you knock down some oak trees, you’re still going to get waterfowl. You should not be knocking down trees just for the sake of knocking down trees or as a way to make a report look good to the FAA.”
Toni Barry, principal environmental analyst at the county’s Department of Environmental Review, is working on a draft environmental-impact report (EIR) for the Yuki orchard project. The report will take everything into consideration: public safety, wildlife habitat and even terrorist attacks. “You don’t want somebody with a rocket launcher climbing up in a tree,” she said. Barry added that homeland-security issues also will be included in another EIR she’s currently working on, the airport’s master plan. The master plan includes the construction of a new runway, to be built around 2020, directly in the path of the oaks.
Barry says the construction of a new runway is dependent on future population growth and demand for more flights. Pachl noted, “It is an interesting coincidence that the airport may put in a third runway.” (SACRAMENTO IS GROWING LIKE CRAZY)
Kevin McRae, with the Sacramento Riverfront Property Owners’ Association, said he believes the airport wants to cut the oaks down to make way for a runway that won’t be built for years, if at all. (LIE LIE LIE)
“It’s not necessary to cut down the oaks,” McRae insisted. “Oaks are a precious resource to be conserved, and I think that to remove any more oaks of more than one or two years of age gratuitously without good reason is uncalled for. They should be preserved, not destroyed.”
Jude Lamare of Friends of the Swainson’s Hawk agreed. “These trees have been there for decades, and FAA regulations have been there for decades, and no one has ever said, 'We have to take these trees out.’ Until now.” (YO, GENIUS - TREES GROW AND BECOME MORE OF A HAZARD)
The draft EIR will be completed in April. It will go to the county’s Project Planning Commission for comment, and then a final EIR will be created for consideration by the county’s board of supervisors. The environmentalists hope public support will persuade the board to save the oaks.
And if that's not enough to prove these people are idiots, 30 seconds worth of Googling came up with this nice little list of birdstrike incidents...
http://www.birdstrike.org/commlink/signif.htm
}:-)4
http://www.nwased.com/
Lower left hand side...
Birdstrike Video....
I couldn't believe that. I heard about this last night and was dumb struck that the airport was leasing out the land for this stuff - that is harmful to aviaiton. Abandoned pear orchard... BIRDS, Wetlands - BIRDS, etc. etc. etc. The list is long about what's wrong at SMF - but the FAA is on the warpath. This has gone on too long.
Good choice on staying clear of SMF and those big ole 737 and 757 Birds.
;-)
That's why I like the little airports. And, the service is better.
True. A bird strike is only reported if it causes damage or a 121 or 135 captain is covering hiney.
I've had a prop strike something small but with an awful lot of blood, innards (stuff my English relatives probably eat) and guano in it. I swear, the sum of the parts was great than the whole after kissing my propeller at 25/25. I also had a near miss with an eagle that was scavenging a crow in the middle of a runway -- some previous pilot's airkill.
Bummed me out to see that the symbol of our nation is a scavenger.
On the bright side, four more birds and I'm an ace.
I'm flying from a suburban drome where the hazards are deer, one very large and suicidal coyote, and flocks of geese. Letting the grass grow high makes the geese nervous and they split, but it would encourage the deer. The geese are a nightmare to encounter -- I know pilots that close their eyes and wait to be through the flock. They are not migrating as much because idiots feed them -- the geese, I mean, not the pilots.
I habitually touch down as slow as possible (remember the "v" is squared in the Kinetic Energy formula) and have yet to snag Bambi. Or even Mother Goose. But it's more luck than skill.
So they're gonna burn poor Yuki's home. My heart bleeds... maybe the environmentalists should move in. They all lay on the drama like they were Joan of Arc, let 'em make it happen.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
The other two are birdstrikes, but the "bird" the Baron in the top picture struck was a C-180. It's from the Antelope Valley, a pretty well known set of pics, online in many places.
http://www.skypark.org/BaronMidair/Midair.htm
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I saw a Phantom that had a similar experience at one of the UK bases in about 1983. Lakenheath or Mildenhall. I thought he struck geese in formation. One FODded the port engine, one went through the port 3/4 windscreen and FODded the pilot, and one made a dent in the port leading edge that looked like a taxi mishap with a telegraph pole.
The backseater, who was not a rated pilot, unstowed and set up the stick and landed the plane. (the stick was removable in some marks of Phantom, the backseater operated BVR intercept radar, which had a stick of its own, and various precision-guided air-to-ground voodoo in those days). The pilot survived. The mishap investigation was still underway, but they thought they were going to scrap the plane when the investigators were done with it. When the compressor disk failed. it was only partially contained and the structure was full of holes.
Supposedly the CO tore the backseater a stripe for not command ejecting, but IIRC they were over water when the mishap occurred, and the guy was worried about the nonresponsive state of the pilot.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
FYI, that first pick of the Beech Baron was the result of a collision with a C180. Unfortunately, the C180 driver augered in.
Check post 26. That site says the opposite.
"That's why I like the little airports. And, the service is better"
They built it in a fog hole, exec is much better plus not being in the middle of nowhere.
Took off from JFK in a United 747 in 1976. A bird was ingested into the left engine and made such a thud and noise that I thought the plane would go down. Very scary, except the businessman sitting next to me hardly looked up from reading his newspaper. The pilots turned the engine off, we flew to Chicago, dumped fuel over the lake and landed safely. Because we were late to SFO, the airline put me up in a nice Hilton for the evening. Those were the good old days.
Some people think that putting human life at risk is a perfectly acceptable, in fact necessary, alternative to re-configuring abandoned agricultural land that has become habitate for wildlife.
"If the Beech Baron had been flying a few inches to the right, we likely wouldn't be wondering how Robert Hollis Gates, of Tehachapi, Calif., managed to land it safely after a midair with a Cessna 180 last Jan. 16. The Baron lost a section of fuselage, but Gates walked away with cuts and bruises. The 180 broke up in flight and the pilot, 40-year-old David Lazerson, a civilian test pilot instructor at Edwards Air Force Base and deputy director of the Joint Strike Fighter Integrated Test Force, was killed. According to the NTSB report, Gates said he was in cruise climb between 5,500 and 6,500 feet near Tehachapi when he saw the right gear leg of the Cessna coming at him from one o' clock. He ducked, then saw a dirt strip and managed to set the Baron down."
Sadly, Mr. Hollis was in the best position to 'see and avoid' and didn't. His Baron, in climb configuration, was most likely obcsured by the cowl of Mr. Lazerson's C180 and below the horizon line.
Let's keep our eye's out of the cockpit, folks.
I apologize - I thought it was a different article. I didn't read it.
Just find it interesting that the most dangerous birds out there are our fellow pilots. I've flown sailplanes and powered planes a lot in that area and it's a very target rich environment. Let's all watch out for each other out there, O.K?
What is needed right at this moment is that hurricane Katrina reporter to go: "Wooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
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