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Ready aim fire! The snowy owl hunt has begun

Hedwig, Harry Potter’s snowy owl, would not be welcome at New York’s Kennedy Airport. After one snowy owl got sucked into a jet engine at JFK Airport, the species was added to a list of birds that are allowed to be shot and killed there in order to protect planes from deadly collisions, according to news reports. At least two snowy owls were already shot and killed at JFK this Saturday (Dec. 7), according to NBC New York.

However, after a surge of media attention, the Port Authority said Monday night (Dec. 9) it was reversing its decision to shoot the birds. The Port Authority is working with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to move immediately toward implementing a program to trap and relocate snowy owls that pose a threat to aircraft at [John F. Kennedy] and LaGuardia airports. The Port Authority’s goal is to strike a balance in humanely controlling bird populations at and around the agency’s airports to safeguard passengers on thousands of aircrafts each day.

A total of five planes were hit by snowy owls at Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports in recent weeks, the Port Authority told the Associated Press.

 On Saturday, authority workers shot two snowy owls with a shotgun amid concerns that they would also fly into planes. A wildlife specialist who works for the Port Authority spent 45 minutes chasing one of them down, the source said.

 Corey Finger, bird watcher and owner of the blog 10,000 Birds, says it’s unusual for snowy owls to migrate to the area in such large numbers.

“There are so few and so rarely come down here, to shoot them seems like a complete waste,” he said.

 This isn’t the first time the Port Authority has killed birds over flight concerns. More than 1,000 geese were caught and gassed near Rikers Island between 2003 and 2009 to curb the potential threat to aircraft.

 A commercial jet hit a goose upon takeoff in 2009, forcing the plane to land on the Hudson River in what was referred to as the Miracle on the Hudson. That brought renewed focus on the threat of bird strikes, and about 2,000 geese were rounded up and killed that year.

 Hundreds have since been killed each year near airports and in parks throughout the city.

Christine Sheppard, director of the Bird Collision Program for American Bird Conservancy and one of the world’s leading experts on bird collisions, said there are other ways to avoid bird strikes.

“You can use radar,” she said. “Create a situation where people at the airport are aware of where birds are, they can actually warn a pilot.”

 For reasons nobody fully understands, snowy owl numbers are spiking in the Northeast this winter, sadly their presence isn’t welcomed to some, but to others the fight to protect these birds continue.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/11/logan-airport-shows-way-snowy-owls-alight/hIwJb74URZaHhp6MIJKybL/story.html

http://www.ibtimes.com/snowy-owls-shot-jfk-port-authority-mulls-alternatives-control-birds-ny-airports-1509076