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WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT 18 airportbusiness April 2017 By Daniel McSwain GOING GREEN Artificial Turf for Tortoise Troubles and More From wildlife management to visual recognition to FOD control, airports are turning to artificial turf to improve airfield safety and operations. The solution? Replace the natural grass with artificial turf. Gopher tortoises burrowing in close prox- imity to runways are a safety hazard to airport operations. And because the tortoises are a threatened species, relocating the animals and closing the burrows was a regulated process, as well as extremely time-consuming and costly for the airport. Between 2008 and 2014, the airport excavated over 875 burrows and removed 345 tortoises, costing nearly $400,000. And once removed, the tortoises typically came back to re-burrow. The airport entered into an agreement with the FAA Airport Technology Research and Development Branch to conduct and fund the study, which was to measure the effectiveness of aviation turf to mitigate the presence of the burrowing tortoises. The turtles were carefully removed and the area excavated. The artificial turf system, called AvTurf, was installed on a plot around the run- way's blast pad and infilled with sand ballast. Four wildlife cameras ran continuously along the perimeter of artificial turf, which recorded photographs of any movement. After a year of observation and data col- lection, no tortoise burrowing was detected in the test area. The FAA study, "Artificial Turf And Gopher Tortoises At Orlando Sanford International Airport," concluded that installing artificial turf in runway and taxiway safety areas can be an effective solution for wildlife control. WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT AND FEDER- AL REGULATIONS Under federal regulations, airports are required to maintain runway safety areas free of haz- W hen hundreds of burrow ing gopher tortoises made their h o m e i n O r l a n d o S a n f o r d International's runway safety area grass, the unassuming rep- tiles created a glaring problem for airport operational safety. An artificial turf helipad installed in the British Virgin Islands. Act Global AvTurf Inc.