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douglas9

(4,484 posts)
Wed May 31, 2023, 07:40 AM May 2023

Airports Have Become Accidental Wildlife Sanctuaries

Some states’ last grassland bird populations live and breed only in the lawns next to taxiways and runways.


For the past several decades, Portsmouth International Airport at Pease, in New Hampshire, has hosted a frequent flier with no known credentials. It comes and goes as it pleases, always bypassing security; it carries no luggage, not even a government-issued ID.

But unlike the other passengers that regularly flock to Pease, the upland sandpiper—a spindly, brown-freckled bird native to North America’s grasslands—has no destination apart from the airport itself. The fields between Pease’s runway and taxiways are now the only place in the entire state where the species is known to regularly reproduce. Each year, about seven sandpiper couples nest in the airport’s meticulously mowed grasslands, fledging roughly a dozen chicks, according to Brett Ferry, a wildlife biologist at the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. Should they be snuffed out, Ferry told me, “that would be it for New Hampshire’s breeding population.”

New Hampshire’s sandpipers aren’t alone in their plight. Across the United States (and, really, the world), all sorts of animals that have lost their natural homes to urban development and human-driven climate change are seeking sanctuary at airports. Vulnerable butterflies have camped out at the dunes near LAX; an endangered garter snake has found one of its last refuges at San Francisco International Airport. Terrapin turtles searching for egg-laying sites have triggered traffic jams on JFK’s runways. But perhaps no group is in greater peril than the Northeast’s grassland birds, which, in recent decades, have found themselves almost exclusively relegated to airports and airfields. It’s a responsibility that these travel hubs never asked for, and mostly do not want. Now the regional survival of many species may hinge on the hospitality of some of the country’s most bird-averse spots.


https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/05/airport-endangered-wildlife-conservation-management-safety/674238/?utm_source=feed

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Airports Have Become Accidental Wildlife Sanctuaries (Original Post) douglas9 May 2023 OP
reminds me of the movie terminal. AllaN01Bear May 2023 #1
Point of view central scrutinizer May 2023 #2
So have military bases grantcart May 2023 #3

AllaN01Bear

(23,281 posts)
1. reminds me of the movie terminal.
Wed May 31, 2023, 09:04 AM
May 2023

also nasas space port and landing strip in florida i, cape cnaveral ,s a nationaly designated wildlife sanctuary. during the shuttle era it wasnt uncommon for nasa personell to chase off aligators .

grantcart

(53,061 posts)
3. So have military bases
Wed May 31, 2023, 10:31 AM
May 2023

Camp Pendleton is the largest pristine land coastal land mass in CA hosting dozens of endangered species.

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