15,000 Gulls Gunned Down at JFK Airport, Study Says

Alarmed about hundreds of sea gulls crashing into planes, officials at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport hired government biologists who shot nearly 15,000 gulls last year, documents show.

The shootings, documented in a federal study obtained by the Associated Press, were an act of desperation at an airport situated next to a national wildlife refuge, says Jack Gartner, manager of aeronautical services at JFK.

“We’ve always approached shooting as a last resort,” he said. “And when you’re dealing with sea gulls, no single technique has been found to repel them over time.”

U.S. Department of Agriculture biologists shot the birds because the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, said gulls were damaging planes and endangering passengers.

Gull-plane collisions destroyed or damaged 37 airplane engines at JFK between 1979 and 1990, wrote Richard A. Dolbeer, a scientist with the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the author of the report.

No people were injured as a result of the collisions, although bird strikes led to 40 aborted takeoffs during the period, Dolbeer wrote. In one incident last May, a Boeing 747 that ingested a gull blew 10 tires and burned out its brakes while stopping.

USDA biologists with 12-gauge shotguns shot birds five days a week from May 20 to Aug. 8, 1991, according to the report. They killed 14,886 gulls.

Most of the gulls were retrieved and buried on airport property.

Local environmentalists expressed shock that the Port Authority chose such a harsh method to deal with the birds.

A laughing gull colony at the adjacent Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is the only known breeding colony in New York state. It grew from 15 pairs in 1979 to almost 8,000 last year. Not all of the dead gulls were thought to be from the refuge.

“To find them sailing in and doing this on the sly, in the dark, no environmental assessment, no notification, no public comment, nothing,” said Margaret Hayes-Young, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club’s New York City group. “What do you do next? Kill all the Canada geese?”

David Burg, a spokesman for the New York City chapter of the Audubon Society, said public safety should be paramount.

In the report, Dolbeer recommended resuming the shooting this year, as well as either destroying or moving the laughing gull colony at Jamaica Bay.