In early 2007, Hurlburt Field AFB's pigeon problem had grown out of control. Base commanders approached Birdstrike Control Program to address the issue and ask what could be done about it. BCP suggested that a trapping program be implemented basewide, to effectively remove the problem birds from all areas of the airbase at once. The leadership was skeptical that it could be accomplished so efficiently but decided to give it a try. At the same time, the base commander was convinced that netting the hangars would be the resolution, particularly since he had heard about its usage at so many other airbases, and it was decided to run an experiment to test the efficaciousness of each method, by starting the trapping program and concurrently installing netting in one of the hangars (the worst hangar in terms of pigeon populations on the base).

For the first the 2.5 years of BCP's contract, we had watched the pigeon population grow (pigeons can double if not triple their numbers through the course of one breeding season), routinely documenting the airfield crossings and raising concerns regarding risks to flight safety. At the time, BCP's contract "stopped at the hangar doors", as Pest Management handled pigeon control in the hangars. Pest Management had "put
out some traps" but literally did not have the manning to monitor/maintain them and as a result was wholly ineffective. Instead, they would come out to implement lethal control measures in the hangars. Pest
Management only had one person in the office for majority of this time (the rest of the shop was deployed) and was obviously overloaded with basewide issues. There was no way Pest Management was going to be able to tackle this issue. Lethal control procedures were actually implemented once during that first 2.5 years by Pest Management and they only killed 6-8 birds. Additionally, the hangar ceilings are typically too high to effective shoot the birds with the pellet guns being used at Hurlburt. The hangar had to be cleared of all aircraft, interrupting maintenance schedules and in the end, did not even dent the problem.

So, at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars (current costs are roughly $30,000 - $60,000 per hanagr installed, without maintenance), netting was installed in Eason hangar, a prominent hangar on the flightline that is routinely left open. Although netting can assist in some exclusion, it is notorious for not
eliminating pigeons that readily find holes or gaps left via installation and then the netting is basically serving as a safety net for the birds to retreat to and seek refuge. Gaps left after the netting installation at Hurlburt (in our most problematic and infested hangar) actually were large enough that a hawk figured out how to get in and kill the rest of the pigeons at the time. While this technically assisted our efforts, hangar personnel then had dead carcasses dropping onto the topside of the netting and blood, with flesh and eventually maggots dropping down onto personnel and aircraft. The netting installation contractors would not come back to correct the problem and while not a part of BCP's contract, we would then go back and cut through the netting to remove the dead birds and so on... That same hangar has actually had the newly-installed netting rolled back for building repairs for more than a year now, without ever being put back in place. In short, the cost to put in netting is not worth the problems that arise.

When BCP strated its trapping program, there were on any given day approximately 80 - 100 birds between three main hangars that could be visually counted. Generally speaking, you can at a minimum double, if not triple, these numbers for what is actually in your local area (telling us we had a problem that actually numbered in the 300s). At the end of the first trapping season, BCP had successfully removed over 550 birds from the three primary hangars. Clearly we had a bigger problem than anyone knew. Today, 2.5 years later, one can count/document 1-2 pigeons at any given time in the airfield environment and guess where we find them... exclusively in one of the hangars on the topside of the newly installed netting!

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