In the days following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, search and rescue crews and recovery specialists from around the nation were called to New York City to help comb through what remained of the United States’ tallest buildings. As teams of workers began descending on Ground Zero and the Staten Island landfill--the destination for more than 1 million tons of twisted metal and crumpled cars--they were joined by thousands of migrating gulls.

More than 3,500 Herring, Ring-billed and Great black-backed gulls making their way south along the Hudson River began harassing recovery workers and threatening efforts to preserve critical evidence at the Staten Island landfill. But on September 17, just six days after the terrorist attacks, Wildlife Services biologists with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service arrived at the scene to help--and they haven’t left since.

“Gulls are a common site at landfills,” said Rich Chipman, director of APHIS’s Wildlife Services State Office, based in Castleton, N.Y. “But this isn’t just any landfill, it’s sacred ground and it’s also a crime scene. This is not a place for birds to be loafing about.”

With the skyline of New York City in the distant background, Rich Chipman (right), director of the APHIS Wildlife Services State Office in Castleton, N.Y., steadies a pole as he helps Tom Seamans, an APHIS Wildlife Services biologist with the agency’s National Wildlife Research Center Field Station in Sandusky, Ohio, establish a perimeter of mylar flagging around the Staten Island landfill. That landfill has been the destination for more than one million tons of wreckage from the World Trade Center, in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack there. The shiny color of the mylar--along with the noise it makes in the wind--is effective in dispersing gulls from the area. It’s one of the many initiatives that APHIS specialists have continued to employ at that site, since last September, to keep birds from harassing recovery workers and threatening efforts to preserve critical evidence possibly deposited there.--Photo by Richard Dolbeer

For about eight months now, rotating teams of APHIS biologists, from around the nation, have worked from sunup to sundown to keep gulls and other birds away from the landfill--where truckload after truckload of debris is brought for examination each day. Led by Chipman, the teams use harmless noisemakers and pyrotechnic devices that explode in the air like fireworks to scare birds from the area. Since the arrival of the APHIS biologists, the number of gulls in the area has dropped dramatically.

Richard Dolbeer, a research biologist with the APHIS National Wildlife Research Center Field Station in Sandusky, Ohio, uses a nonlethal pyrotechnic pistol to disperse gulls from the Staten Island landfill, the destination for more than one million tons of wreckage from the World Trade Center--Photo by Tom Seamans

“In fact,” Chipman quipped, “the detectives on-site joke that this is the only landfill in the world without any birds.”

In order to be effective, APHIS’s Wildlife Services specialists must have an ongoing presence at the landfill or the gulls will return to the site. The specialists do dispersal work at landfills throughout the United States to protect the health and safety of employees and prevent birds from taking refuse offsite. In addition to harassing nuisance birds, they are also monitoring rodent populations at the Staten Island landfill.

“This tragedy highlights the fact that wildlife can cause problems in any setting,” said Bill Clay, APHIS’s deputy administrator for wildlife services, who spent two days working at the landfill. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re out in the country or near a major city.”

More than 60 of the agency’s Wildlife Services specialists from field and research positions in 23 States have worked two-week shifts at the landfill, and many more have volunteered.

“After September 11, everyone in the country wanted to do something to help,” said Dan McMurtry, a wildlife services specialist who left his APHIS post in Columbia, Mo., to spend two weeks harassing gulls at the landfill. “This was something more than money that I could give.”

McMurtry and other Wildlife Services experts who work at the site must dress in protective Ty-vek suits and rubber boots, and tread carefully around twisted girders, crumpled desks, crushed cars, and other rubble from the twin towers. They also wear respirators to avoid inhaling asbestos and the methane gas that bubbles up from old mountains of trash. They all take pains to stay out of the way of similarly dressed law enforcement officials and other volunteers who are sorting through the debris looking for pieces of plane, jewelry, credit cards, and other items that might help to identify a victim or shed new light on the terrorist attacks.

In addition to noisemakers and pyrotechnics, the APHIS biologists use a number of innovative techniques to keep the birds at bay. Mylar tape, which flashes in the sunlight and makes a crinkly noise in the breeze, has been hung around the landfill as yet another deterrent to the birds. In the early morning hours before the sun comes up, the specialists point lasers to the sky, sending a red dot of light, across the horizon, that also scares the birds away.

The landfill, which closed in February 2001 but reopened to serve as a clearinghouse for wreckage from the World Trade Center, has historically been the winter home of more than 100,000 gulls.

“On cloudy days, we’ve dispersed as many as 15,000 birds headed straight for the landfill,” said Ken Preusser, a Wildlife Services district supervisor for APHIS based in Castleton. “We have to re-educate the gulls on a regular basis that this is no longer the place for them to be.”

To check the effectiveness of their work, the specialists take a bird count around the landfill twice a day. During a typical busy day, they move more than 1,000 birds from the landfill.

Recovery efforts at the landfill were originally expected to last through the summer, but workers are far ahead of schedule and expect to finish sifting through all 1.25 million tons of wreckage by the end of May.

“We’ll be here,” Preusser underscored, “as long as they need us.” •