Mock flock deployed for the first time at USAG Bavaria

Photo By Ella Haendel | When driving between Tower Barracks and Rose Barracks along One Community Road, you may need to look twice if you see a flock of birds flying in the air.  

GERMANY

04.27.2023

Story by Ella Haendel and Kayla Overton

U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria

TOWER BARRACKS, Germany – When driving between Tower Barracks and Rose Barracks along One Community Road, you may need to look twice if you see a flock of birds flying in the air.

These mock flocks, a group of kites that resemble hawks, are being used for the first time at U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria to scare off birds such as woodlarks, tree pipits, yellowhammers, and others from moving into a recently cleared area that is a future building site.

It’s possible that if birds – legally protected species in Germany and the European Union - settle in these areas, construction activity would need to be stopped.

“If these species remain or breed on the construction site during the construction phase, there will be a species protection conflict (with construction measures),” said Reiner Buettner, biologist at the Institute for Vegetation Science and Landscape Ecology (IVL). “This can be avoided by preventing these bird species from settling there.”

Biologists Buettner and his colleague Harald Schott are contractors hired by the project proponent as natural resources experts for this project. Their task is ecological construction supervision and ensuring compliance with host nation authorities’ permit stipulations.

The kites function as a type of aerial scarecrow to scare off birds from the area. In the past, different methods were used, such as warning tapes or alarm clocks, but birds will stop reacting to those after a short period of time, so the team now must be creative with different methods. This is a low impact, inexpensive solution to avoid what might be a costly delay in construction should the birds establish nests in the cleared areas.

This new flock is currently flying high over the future location of the Operational Readiness Training Complex (ORTC) that will be a modern training campus for U.S. Army troops and NATO partners coming to Grafenwöhr for military training.

The State Construction Agency and their contractors design U.S. Forces’ projects in Bavaria and oversee the construction activities. They are working closely on the ORTC project with the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division and the German Federal Forest Service at Grafenwoehr Training Area.

• Date Taken: 04.27.2023
• Date Posted: 05.01.2023 05:49
• Story ID: 443485
• Location: DE