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By Jim Morris Updated 12:22 AM Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Here are some notes from the annual Ohio Fish and Wildlife Conference I attended a few days ago in Columbus:

• Talk about timing, the topic for the opening session was "Birds and Aircraft: Fighting for airspace in ever more crowded skies," coming less than a month after US Airways Flight 1549 "landed" on the Hudson River after striking a flock of geese and losing both engines.

The speaker, Dr. Richard Dolbeer of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, said even small birds, such as starlings, pose a threat to jet engines. Some of the birds that have brought down aircraft include: eagles, geese, ducks, pelicans, cormorants, hawks, even wild turkeys.

Although you might not have heard much about bird strikes before the US Airways event, more than 7,700 were reported worldwide in 2008.

Because jet engines make almost no noise in front in the air, birds don't hear them coming. Some of the ways used to rid airports of birds include use of noisemakers and getting rid of rodent populations on the ground.

• Speaking of bird problems, Travis DeVault of the same wildlife agency talked about the constant spread of double-crested cormorants and their effect on fish populations. He showed graphs that indicate clearly fish populations decrease when cormorant populations go up.

The Great Lakes has seen an explosion of the pesky birds. From less than 100 nesting pairs documented in 1913, the number has grown to 118,000 in recent years. Multiply that by two for individual birds and add some non-nesting cormorants and the Great Lakes region is looking at almost 500,000.

He said a cormorant eats up to one pound of fish per day. One slide he put up showed a cormorant's stomach cut open to reveal two large adult yellow perch inside.

• As you might expect, any conference on Ohio wildlife gets around to deer. Deer problems have been no more evident over the years than at the Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks.

Perhaps you remember the great experiment tried by the parks in the 1990s when it tried to relocate more than 400 whitetails from its Sharon Woods facility. Bowing to the animal rights community, the parks tried to capture and relocate deer rather than the proven method of culling by sharpshooter.

The experiment was a total failure with most if not all of the deer perishing. The parks also have tried birth-control, which has worked, but it is almost impossible to implement.

Still, the deer must be removed. At one time, the population at Sharon Woods was about 450 per square mile and all vegetation from a deer's head level on down was decimated.

Today the park system has control of its deer problem, using sharpshooters, but more and more are allowing public hunting and controlled hunts. Today there are 20-40 deer per square mile over the 23,500 acres of park land. Venison from the sharpshooters (all park employees) is donated to a Columbus food pantry.

Contact this reporter at

(937) 225-2409 or jmorris

@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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