Communications: electrical – Condition responsive indicating system – Specific condition
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-10
2002-06-18
Swiatek, Robert P. (Department: 3644)
Communications: electrical
Condition responsive indicating system
Specific condition
C119S719000, C116S229000, C367S139000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06407670
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
It has long been recognized that bird strikes in the vicinity of airports represent a substantial and significant hazard for departing and incoming aircraft. It is estimated that bird strikes cause between $800 million and $2.5 billion worth of damage to civilian aircraft and airlines every year, with additional damage inflicted on military aircraft.
Considerable efforts have been directed at analyzing the bird strike problem and to identify means of keeping birds away from the areas surrounding airstrips. The Bird Strike Hazard Committee—U.S.A., the Bird Strike Committee Canada, the Bird Strike Avoidance Team (U.K.), the Bird Strike Committee Europe (International) and corresponding committees in other jurisdictions have long been engaged in the on-going task of analyzing the problem and of assessing potential solutions. Despite this, an effective solution to the problem has not been found.
The use of ultrasound and infrasound to repel or warn wildlife of imminent danger have both been considered but are considered impractical or ineffective for various reasons. Avoiding or eliminating habitat features that attract wildlife has also been suggested but this solution tends to be impractical in the environment of most airports and its effectiveness tends to be species-specific.
The prior art solutions most often considered and used rely on the production of stimuli that are intended to scare away the birds. These stimuli include scaring noises of a mechanical nature (e.g. horns, miscellaneous mechanical noises, scare cannons or scare guns), bio-acoustical sounds (e.g. recordings of distressed birds or of human voices), visual stimuli (e.g. lights, strobe lights, balloons or stuffed animals) and pyrotechnics (crackers, fireworks).
However, it is broadly recognized that wildlife, and particularly birds, become habituated to various stimuli and eventually cease to be repelled or scared by them. In an attempt to minimize habituation, many prior art approaches provide randomness and variety to render the stimuli unpredictable (e.g. Hans Blokpoel, Bird Hazards to Aircraft, Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1976; Scare Wars (product literature), Reed-Joseph International Company; Peterson, et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,450,063). These measures have the effect of delaying the onset of habituation. However, they do not prevent it. Indeed, it is broadly recognized that the prior art scaring solutions do not repel birds with any significant degree of permanency (Van Egmond and Green, 1989).
More sophisticated and labour intensive approaches to keeping birds at bay include the use of model airplanes, falconry or bird dogs. These approaches each require considerable human intervention and have their own particular limitations. They are also costly and are sometimes unreliable or simply unsafe, particularly in airport environments.
It is also known in the prior art to conduct occasional killing of birds, sometimes leaving the corpse to lie within sight of other birds, in an attempt to avoid habituation to dispersal stimuli. However, this is an extreme measure and is nonetheless labour intensive and somewhat limited in effectiveness.
Several authors have analyzed the problem extensively and have concluded that nothing short of a mobile, aggressive and persistent patrol group with suitable scaring equipment is required to keep birds away from the area surrounding airstrips (Blokpoel, supra; Bruce MacKinnon, Transport Canada, New Technologies in Wildlife Control, Airport Wildlife Management, No. 19, Fall 1996).
It is therefore apparent that despite many efforts over the past century, there is still a clear need for an effective method of keeping wildlife out of the vicinity of airports.
The same problem is found in relation to agricultural lands where birds and wildlife cause significant crop damage, and in relation to landfills, which attract birds and wildlife and offer the opportunity for them to spread disease.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method of suppressing wildlife from designated areas such as airstrips, agricultural land and landfills. It is a specific object of this invention to provide such a method which overcomes the problem of habituation to scaring tactics.
It is a further object of the invention is to achieve wildlife suppression in a designated area while avoiding irreparable damage to the wildlife and to the environment.
It is yet a further object of the invention to provide a system which may optionally be manually controlled or fully automated so as not to require continuous human supervision.
These and other objects of the invention will be more fully appreciated from the disclosure, which follows.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This invention proceeds on the premise that in order to effectively suppress wildlife from a designated area, it is necessary to not only prevent habituation to the stimuli that are used, but to actually condition the wildlife to avoid the area.
In achieving conditioning according to the invention, randomization of the nature of the dispersal stimuli (which has been the objective of much of the prior art) is avoided. Instead, predetermined, consistent and recognizable warning stimuli are associated with the designated area. This allows the wildlife to consistently recognize the stimuli as comprising a warning. In addition, the warning stimuli is presented as a precursor to a real and enforceable threat, which threat will be displayed and eventually enforced if the wildlife fails to leave the designated area. It is the backing up of the warning or precursor stimuli with true negative consequences which are innately recognized by wildlife as undesirable which produce the conditioned response, i.e. avoiding the restricted area and avoiding or withdrawing from the warning stimuli.
According to conditioning theory, “unconditioned stimuli” are stimuli that wildlife react to innately such as food, discomfort or certain kinds of danger such as natural predators. In the case of negative unconditioned stimuli, wildlife will innately recognize and avoid the stimuli. When other stimuli are repeatedly associated with “unconditioned stimuli”, wildlife may eventually produce a response (the “conditioned response”) to such other stimuli that is the same as the natural response to the unconditioned stimuli. In the context of the present invention, the warning or precursor stimuli may be viewed as the conditioned stimuli while the enforcement action may be viewed as the “unconditioned stimuli”. The avoidance of the warning stimuli and indeed of the restricted area is the desired conditioned response.
The enforceable threat is chosen such that if the threat is realized, the action taken will not irreparably damage the wildlife and will not damage the environment.
In one aspect, the invention comprises a method of conditioning wildlife to refrain from entering a restricted area comprising defining the boundaries of said restricted area, and each time wildlife enters the restricted area, first producing at least one predetermined stimulus which is perceptible to the wildlife, if the wildlife commences egress from the restricted area after the production of the stimulus, discontinuing the stimulus, but if the wildlife fails to commence egress from the restricted area after the production of the stimulus, directing compelling enforcement against the wildlife.
In another aspect, the wildlife is allowed a predetermined time to commence egress before enforcement is undertaken.
In a further aspect, if the production of warning stimuli does not cause the wildlife to commence egress, the threat will be displayed, such as by the targeting of the threat dispenser where the threat consists of a projectile, or for example by the projection of a projectile not intended to actually reach the wildlife. If such threat display is ineffective, realization of the threat with actual enforcement is then used.
In yet another aspect, the invention comprises a method of conditioning wildlife to refrain from entering a restricted area comprising defini
Dysarsz Hans J.
Millikin Rhonda Lorraine
Law Offices of John A. Parrish
Swiatek Robert P.
Zerr John W.
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