Early one Monday morning, Mississippi State University researchers Scott Rush and Adrian Naveda baited their trap at Pine Ridge landfill with dead deer collected from the side of rural Mississippi roads.

Shortly after 4 p.m., they sprung the trap and set to work tagging and collecting data from the black and turkey vultures inside.

Rush, who works as an associate professor at MSU’s Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Aquaculture, has spent the last few years tagging vultures at both the Pine Ridge landfill in Lauderdale County and the Golden Triangle Regional Landfill near West Point.

By studying the birds’ movement patterns, he hopes to learn ways to reduce the threat vultures pose to aircraft throughout the state.

“For the last couple years we’ve been tagging and tracking Black and Turkey Vultures in Mississippi to learn more about their movements and how we can help mediate the risks these birds can pose to aviation,” he said.

The grant-funded research study was coordinated with NAS Meridian after Navy pilots noticed an increase in vulture sightings on training flights and reached out to MSU for help finding solutions. Meridian Airport Authority assists with the grant’s administration.

Although commercial flights soar at altitudes far beyond vulture territory, Rush said take-offs and landings cross the 1,000ft or so altitude frequented by vultures.

Low-altitude training flights, like those conducted by student pilots at NAS Meridian also risk run-ins with the scavenging birds.

“The training aircraft, they typically have a single engine,” he said. “So even a small bird can be dangerous.”

And vultures are not small birds, Rush said. At the high speeds reached by Navy training jets, colliding with a vulture would be catastrophic, he said. 

“It would easily go through the cockpit or take off a wing,” he said.

Unfortunately, vultures and pilots have similar ideas of good flying conditions, and the birds are often most active during peak flying times, Rush said.

Efforts pay off

Throughout the course of the study, Rush and his team have placed GPS trackers on more than 30 birds and tagged the wings of more than 300, making it one of the largest vulture studies to date.

The study uses wing tags instead of the leg bands commonly used on other birds because vultures tend to defecate on their legs to cool themselves, making the bands difficult to read.

And that effort has paid off. Rush said he has already learned a lot about the birds.

Lauderdale County, he said, is home to about 1,500 vultures per month, and the population is growing, with the population of Black vultures increasing faster than Turkey vultures.

Black vultures, he said, are typically more aggressive and travel shorter distances. The birds will travel about six kilometers per day as opposed to the Turkey vultures which can go about 20 kilometers per day.

An increasing population that travels less means more birds in the area and a greater risk one will cross paths with an airplane.

“There’s a lot more birds in a smaller, condensed area in Meridian,” he said.

Rush’s work has also identified some simple changes that could take advantage of vultures’ natural instincts to reduce the risk of them colliding with aircraft.

Vultures are lazy, he said, and that could be a good thing.

Proximity is key 

Right now, he said, landfills, which are frequented by vultures, are required to cover active cells on the weekends. When their food source is covered, the vultures have to move. A change in the regulations to let the cells stay open would encourage the birds to stay put and keep out of traditional aviation flight paths.

Locating new landfills near existing ones could also minimize risk. Vultures would rather spend their time eating than flying around looking for a new food source, and putting landfills closer together would reduce the time the birds spend in the sky, Rush said.

“Proximity is key,” he said.

Minimizing open containers at solid waste transfer stations and strategically locating utility and communication towers, which are coveted perches for vultures, could also encourage the birds to stay out of the way of jets and airplanes, he said.

Vultures aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, Rush said, and the creatures play a crucial role in the ecosystem.

But with the data from his study, and others that follow, his hope is that Mississippi leaders can make informed landscape management decisions and plan for a future where humans and vultures coexist.