Landfill methane towers scorch perched hawks

updated 3:48 p.m. ET May 24, 2009

ALBANY, New York - A towering landfill smokestack offers an irresistible perch for raptors to watch for rodents scavenging in the treeless landscape below. But when flames fed by landfill gas rush upward, the birds are being scorched or burned alive.

At the urging of wildlife rehabilitators, the solid-waste industry is starting to investigate where birds may be at risk and ways to protect them — such as welding deterrent spikes atop smokestacks and providing alternative perches.

It's unclear how widespread the problem is, but suffering or dead birds have been reported in recent years in New York, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

"I heard about the horrific injuries these birds were suffering throughout the United States, and I wanted to do something about it," said Stella Miller, president of the Huntington Audubon Society on Long Island, who launched a Save Our Raptors campaign to raise awareness and seek solutions.

Trying to make flares safe
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which only recently became aware of the problem, is working to alert landfill and utility associations and advise them to explore options to make flares safe.

"This issue was brought to our attention recently and in many cases, when landfill operators were notified that there were injured birds because of the flare, the landowners were not aware of the problem," said Alicia Frances King, an agency spokeswoman.

Gary Siftar was mystified when he started seeing red-tailed hawks with scorched feathers at his wildlife clinic in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Fellow rehabilitators at a national conference told him the likely culprit was his local landfill.

Siftar's Oklahoma Raptor Center is about five miles (eight kilometers) from a landfill where a smokestack 60 feet (18 meters) tall and 18 feet (5.4 meters) across burns off methane produced by buried garbage. He concluded that hawks were being singed on the stack.

He wrote a paper on the issue for the National Wildlife Rehabilitation Association last fall and got e-mails from rehabilitators across the country who had treated hawks and owls with singed wings and tails, melted beaks, scorched talons and other burns from landfill gas flares.

Other raptor hazards
It's unknown how big the problem is compared to other raptor hazards. Rehabilitators receive hawks that have been hit by trucks while dining on roadkill, owls tangled in soccer nets, and raptors poisoned by lead shot or pesticides, shot illegally, or snagged on barbed-wire fences.

At their spring conference in Albany, the New York State Association for Solid Waste Management and the Federation of New York Solid Waste Associations passed resolutions to join Audubon's Save the Raptors campaign.

"We get bashed all the time; we're kind of 'down in the dumps,' if you will," said Meg Morris, who chairs the federation. "We fell in love with the idea of doing something this positive. If New York can be a leader in this, it would be great."

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