Pigs patrol Dutch airport to deter hazardous geese

Swine deployed next to Schiphol’s runways to eat sugar beet crop residues that attract the birds

TWENTY pigs are saving air passengers’ bacon after being enlisted by a Dutch airport to stop planes smashing into flocks of geese.

The protective porkers are deployed on 500 acres of farmland sandwiched between two runways at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in a six-week experiment.

Officials hope the animals will eat leftovers from the sugar beet harvest and stop birds being attracted to the spot, which is dangerously close to flight paths at the third busiest airport in Europe. They will also scare away geese.

“The pigs were immediately brought to the field within 12 hours of the sugar beet harvest on Tuesday,” their owner

Josse Haarhuis told De Telegraaf. Haarhuis, the owner of Buitengewone Varkens, which translates as Extraordinary Pigs, said, “They eat the crop residues, so that there will be nothing left for the geese to get.”

The airport’s management said that geese “pose a serious risk to aviation safety due to their size and tendency to fly in flocks, while even a single goose can do substantial damage to an aircraft.”

Bird strikes are a risk because Schiphol is built in an area with lots of water and grassy meadows, which make it an attractive place for the animals to roost.

There are dozens of collisions every year, with 6.6 bird strikes per 10,000 air transport movements recorded by the KLM carrier in 2019.

A special bird radar will be used to chart the impact of the pigs. A second, similar plot of land will be left without the animals. Officials will compare bird activity at the two to judge if the experiment, which lasts until November, is a success. Schiphol boasts 20 bird controllers who work around the clock, every day of the year.

Armed with walkie talkies to update air traffic control, they race around the area in all-terrain vehicles nicknamed Lapwings.

The cars have radar equipment to map the birds, who they target with innovative technology, such as green laser beams which can scare them away.

Other measures such as planting coarse and inedible grasses, which the birds do not like, have been used as well as nets, gas cannons, and inflatable scarecrows. Almost 7,000 geese were rounded up and killed in 2014.

“Many different species of birds have more or less adopted Amsterdam Airport Schiphol as their permanent home,” the airport said in a report.

“Although the airport would prefer to see its grounds entirely free of birds, there are some that can barely be chased away, if at all.”

Kestrels, buzzards, and grey herons, which nest near the airport and hunt mice in the runway area, are particularly resistant to the scare tactics.