IAF’s tree chopping spree to reduce bird hits

Another advantage, the IAF feels, is that cutting down trees would help get rid of animals like Neelgai, which sometimes saunter onto runways and collide with landing aircraft.

This belief has led the IAF to denude several bases, and their surroundings, of tree cover. According to sources, the axe has been used liberally around air bases at Adampur and Sirsa in Punjab, besides Bareilly and Hindon in Uttar Pradesh, among others. The IAF initially felled trees within half-kilometre radii of runways and taxiways in its airbases and subsequently plans to remove all the trees in the camp area.

An IAF spokesman says: “Removal of trees when necessary is restricted to the mandatory flight safety zone. For this, the IAF orders a board of officers in which representatives of the Defence Estates Office and forest department officials are members. A proper record is maintained.”

Ornithologists are appalled at what they call a grossly misplaced theory and pinpoints the the reason of bird hits elsewhere. Bikram Grewal, who has written a detailed book on birds of the subcontinent and represents the Oriental Bird Club, points out that the threat to aircraft is from bigger birds while only small birds nest in trees.

Rajat Bhargava, researcher at the Centre for Wildlife and Ornithology at Aligarh Muslim University, endorses Grewal’s views, saying it is humans who are to blame for bird hits. “It’s not the trees that are to blame as much as the garbage dumps made and worsened by humans,” he notes. Bhargava says birds are attracted to these dumps for food scraps. In a natural environment, they would hunt for food and then return to their habitat.“It is easy access to food that attracts these birds in large numbers and if trees are present in the vicinity, some of them may decide to nest there,” he says. Another reason for birds to shift to trees near air bases could be the destruction of their natural habitat.

IAF sources also point out that in most cases, the aircraft encounter birds outside the half-kilometre radius of airbases and, therefore, the decision to cut or uproot several thousand trees is questionable.