Science Cafe: Birds and Aircraft Fighting for Space in Crowded Skies

Bird and other wildlife collisions with aircraft are an increasing safety and economic concern to civil and military aviation worldwide, costing well over $1 billion each year. Aircraft have been destroyed by wildlife strikes, the most notable of which was the Airbus 320 which landed in the Hudson River in January 2009 after hitting a flock of Canadian geese. And these strikes reporter to the Federal Aviation Administration have increased from about 1,800 in 1990 to over 9,100 in 2009.