Snowy Owls Cause Concern Among Pilots

Snowy owls are native to the Arctic but have been moving further south in recent years.

The white predators like to hang out at airports because the terrain reminds them of their home: with few trees and a good view of prey like small rodents.

But the birds don’t always mix well with populated areas.

Peter Moll, director of Oshkosh’s Wittman Regional Airport, said the owls risk getting killed if they get sucked into a plane’s engine. That scenario also poses a risk to both pilots and passengers.

“We had an incident several years ago where an aircraft hit a snowy owl on landing and it did about $300,000 damage to the airplane,” Moll said.

In November a pilot saw a snowy owl on the Wittman tarmac and reported it to the control tower. In response, an airport employee shot and killed the owl.

That action caught the attention of the Winnebago Audubon Society. Janet Wissink, president of the organization, said the group is working to educate airport employees about snowy owls.

“Owls aren’t afraid of humans because they live in the arctic and gunshots don’t scare them either,” Wissink said.

Wissink explained that the influx in snowy owls in the northern United States is because of an “irruption” in their population, meaning the birds have had a good breeding season and the young need to find new hunting territory to the south.

In an effort to protect the birds as well as pilots and passengers, Wittman and the Audubon Society are working with volunteer falconers to capture errant snowy owls found on the airfield.

The licensed falconers set up “bow nets” to capture the owls. Despite the name, no falcons are used in the process.

In the last week alone, two owls have been safely captured, Moll said. They’re currently in a wildlife rehabilitation center in New London. Once they are at an ideal weight they will be released into the wild.

Wissink says owl release is usually done about 50 or 60 miles east or west of where the bird is captured. That’s because snowy owls migrate from north to south so relocating a captured bird to the east or west helps disperse the population.

Wissink said the Audubon Society is also working with airport staff to educate them on the owls’ behavior to prevent future fatalities to the birds, or potentially humans.

“Don’t wait when it’s posing a danger, call us when you see one and we’ll come out and spend some time and can see if we can’t trap them,” she said.

Snowy owls have also presented challenges to large airports on the East Coast including New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Wissink said when the captured birds are released they will be banded so the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can track them.