The Federal Aviation Administration wanted to keep details on bird strikes at airports secret. But U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said no way. So starting Friday, the FAA will post more of its 19-year-old data on aircraft-animal collisions than it ever has before.

Here’s how LaHood explains the decision in his blog:

There’s nothing amiss about the FAA wanting to keep this information under wraps. Reporting bird-strikes is a voluntary activity on the part of pilots and airlines; the FAA simply reasoned that knowing the data would be made public might lead to reduced reporting of incidents.

In the end, however, the Department of Transportation is, among other things, a safety agency. Public disclosure is our job. The sea change in government transparency is beginning, and we are happy to be a part of it.

The data that is currently available give a sense of the toll on animals, if not aircraft. In the searchable wildlife strike database, I queried all species in Minnesota reportedly struck since 1990, and that returned a count of 1,017, broken down by species. Among the unfortunate winged ones are three bald eagles, 50 Canada geese, 23 barn swallows, 16 American kestrels and one owl. As for terrestrial creatures, 16 deer, two skunks and a jackrabbit were among the runway-kill. By comparison, the nationwide wildlife strike toll amounts to 101,624 since 1990, with gulls (7,554) being the most numerous among the identifiable victims.

Banishing wildlife from the environs of airports is serious business, as my colleague Suzanne Ziegler reported last week. They can’t prevent every wildlife strike, and it’s a good thing that the federal government won’t keep those incidents secret.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Public records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.