PLA soldiers at an air force station in Beijing have been training macaques, harrier dogs and saker falcons to disperse birds ahead of the September 3 military parade.
Beijing has already unveiled measures to clear the capital’s skies of smog and commercial airlines for the 200 air force jets that will take part in the parade, but authorities are also keen to ensure that bird strikes don’t disrupt proceedings.
“Bird strikes are thought to be the most common reason for flight disasters, according to the World Air Sports Federation, and 10,000 flights are estimated to suffer the strikes around the world annually,” reports China Daily.
But unlike Chairman Mao’s notorious campaign to eradicate sparrows in the late 1950s, officials say the aim this time is to encourage birds to relocate away from the air force station where pilots have been training for the event.
The macaques are trained to climb trees and destroy nests, leaving a scent that discourages birds from rebuilding in the same place.
"Using macaques to disperse birds has low costs and risks with high efficiency, and this is a first in the world," said a local political commissar.
The harriers and falcons are used in conjunction to scare birds away from the fields around the air base. The hounds are dispatched to drive birds in the grassland up into the sky, where circling falcons harry them to flee the area.
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