Travis Air Force Base, one of the U.S. military’s busiest passenger and cargo terminal airports, lies smack in the middle of the Pacific Flyway, a migratory path that sees 60 percent of the nation’s wintering waterfowl. “This is the worst place in the world you could ever put a military installation,” says Master Sgt. Aaron Trudeau.
Birds and planes can be a deadly combination, and for a number of years gull flocks crippled the airspace, grounding planes for hours on end. In the ’90s, a flock of seagulls (not the band) collided with a military aircraft at Travis, shuttering three of its four engines. The pilot managed to land without injuring anyone, but the plane was destroyed.
To prevent accidents and clear the birds, the base has called in security reinforcements of a different sort: falcons. “Birds will reroute entire migratory paths to avoid predators,” says Abatement Specialist Brian Goodrich Camp, and that’s exactly what they’ve done at Travis.
The program has been in place since 1998, and in the past six years alone the base has seen a 48 percent reduction in bird traffic. Goodrich Camp says, “I can literally get out of the truck, the falcon opens its wings, and the air space is cleared. And I’m talking tens of thousands of birds. Gone.”
Columbia, a 12-year-old falcon, is part of the Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard program at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield. Like canines with jobs, these working birds need up to two years of training and can cost as much as a used car.
At Travis, multiple species of falcons are needed to handle different environmental factors; the desert birds are built for Northern California’s summer heat, while the arctic birds fly in winter.
Their handler, civilian Brian Goodrich Camp, an abatement specialist, was a fireman and a sheriff when he joined the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis as a volunteer.
He learned fast, landed a job with a pigeon abatement program and now, many years later, Goodrich Camp manages one of the nation’s few military falconry programs, training birds through positive reinforcement and a covetable diet.
“They’re not domesticated,” says Camp. “They’re wild, and they choose to come back.”
Travis AFB uses falcons to keep migratory birds at bay
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