UC Airport Assessing Wildlife Around Facility

The Upper Cumberland Regional Airport in the midst of a wildlife assessment in order to improve security measures.

Airport Manager Dean Selby said the assessment is happening thanks to a grant from the USDA to study the different wildlife in the area and how they impact the airport. Selby said wildlife is one of the biggest dangers to any aircraft whether it is commercial or general aviation.

“They’ll come in here and be looking for things like deer, coyotes, turkey, the whole myriad of – of wildlife that can present a hazard to an aircraft,” Selby said. “And then they will present a report that says, ‘Here’s what we need to do to mitigate this.’ They’ll be looking at things like our fencing, whether we have standing water.”

Selby said the assessment is an important step in the airport’s bigger goal of eventually providing commercial services. He said the assessment will take one year to complete, plus several months to do the necessary paperwork and analyze the results.

Selby said the assessment will also look at the height of grass, the placement of trees, and any potential burrow areas around the airport.

“Safety should be one of our top things and that’s, we’re really working toward making sure that we provide as safe of an environment as we reasonably can,” Selby said.

Selby said the grant they received for the assessment will not pay to fix any of the issues uncovered during the assessment process. The airport could apply for future grants to do that. Selby said the USDA has already begun taking in data points and tracking wildlife for the assessment.

“We’ve got a pretty good working relationship with USDA already,” Selby said. “They’ve been out here for several years helping us mitigate some of the – some of the things that we have seen, and hopefully this just takes it to the next level where that they can see – they can find things that we’ve missed.”