Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
During their stay on the staging grounds, snow geese (Chen caerulescens) are highly sensitive to human presence, noise, and aircraft. Dr. William Gunn described experiments where snow geese would not feed any closer than 1.5 mi (2.41 km) from a device simulating noise made by a compressor station, and birds flying over it diverted their course by 90 degrees or more. Snow geese show evidence of being disturbed by an aircraft by flushing at a mean distance of 1.6 mi (2.57 km) from small aircraft, 2.5 mi (4.02 km) from large aircraft, and 2.3 mi (3.70 km) from small helicopters. They also flushed in response to aircraft flying at altitudes of 8,000 to 10,000 ft (2,440 to 3,050 m), the maximum height at which the test flights were conducted. Deliberate harassing of flocks of snow geese in an area approximately 5 mi by 10 mi (8.05 km by 16.09 km) cleared them out of the area in 15 min. Jerald Jacobson inferred that snow geese may avoid an area as large as 20 mi² (32.18 km²) around an operating drill rig, 28 mi² (45.05 km²) around an operating compressor station, and 250 mi² (402.25 km²) around an airstrip during takeoff and landing of aircraft.
