Author Topic: Turtles rescued after trekking to JFK Airport in Queens  (Read 3249 times)

Offline KB4TEZ

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Turtles rescued after trekking to JFK Airport in Queens
« on: June 29, 2021, 07:18:19 AM »
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/turtles-rescued-after-trekking-to-jfk-airport-in-queens/ar-AALsgdo?ocid=BingNewsSearch

Down here in South Florida, Iguanas are the pesky crawlers, but much faster than a turtle !

Year after year, turtles return to John F. Kennedy Airport -- but this year they needed a little rescuing.
It's nothing new. Each year, the Port Authority's wildlife team looks out for hundreds of female terrapin turtles that come in from Jamaica Bay to lay eggs at the end of the runway.
Since it's not good for anyone for a plane take off with a turtle crossing the runway, the wildlife teams keep busy remaining on the lookout for them.
The team collects the turtles and releases them in a safe place just outside the airport.

Turtles delay flights at JFK
By ABC13
Thursday, July 9, 2009
NEW YORK Grounds crews eventually rounded up the wayward reptiles and deposited them back in the brackish water farther from airport property, but not before the incident disrupted JFK's flight schedule and contributed to delays that reached nearly 1 1/2 hours.
"Apparently, this is something the tower has experienced before," said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters. "I guess it's the season for spawning."

The invasion began unfolding, slowly, at around 8:30 a.m., when an American Eagle flight crew reported seeing three turtles while taxiing out for departure. Before long, a chorus of pilots was radioing the tower to report turtles either on the end of a runway that juts out into the water, or approaching on the grass.

The FAA halted flights for about 12 minutes shortly before 9 a.m. while some of the turtles were cleared away, then quit using the runway entirely after getting new reports of "massive numbers" of turtles on the tarmac, Peters said.

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman John Kelly said airport crews gathered up the turtles in about 35 minutes.

He identified the turtles as Diamondback terrapins, a species common to Jamaica Bay, which surrounds the airport. The turtles appeared to be about 8 inches long and weigh 2 to 3 pounds each.

Jets hit turtles a few times each year at JFK, usually in the final days of June or earliest days in July, according to the FAA's wildlife strike database. There have been no recent reports of the strikes causing any damage to an airplane.