A Root-Cause Investigation Framework for Recurring Runway Wildlife Hazards and Standardized Corrective Action Protocols at Nigerian International Airports
Abstract
Background: Recurring wildlife hazards on Nigerian airport runways represent a systematic failure of wildlife management programs to identify and eliminate the root causes of persistent wildlife attraction and intrusion, rather than a series of independent random events that reactive dispersal management addresses individually without preventing recurrence. The prevalence of recurring wildlife hazard patterns at Nigerian international airports, documented through analysis of the NCAA wildlife strike occurrence database and aerodrome inspection records, indicates that current wildlife management practice does not systematically investigate the causal factors that generate persistent hazard locations and conditions, instead relying on reactive dispersal of wildlife detected in movement areas without the root-cause investigation that would enable the corrective habitat and management interventions required to prevent recurrence Methods: This paper proposes a Root-Cause Investigation Framework for recurring runway wildlife hazards at Nigerian international airports, comprising a recurring hazard identification methodology using occurrence report pattern analysis, a five-category root-cause taxonomy covering habitat attraction, structural facilitation, management system deficiency, institutional coordination failure, and ecological pressure, a standardized corrective action protocol library specifying evidence-based mitigation interventions for each root-cause category, and a recurrence monitoring system tracking corrective action effectiveness through defined performance indicators over post-intervention observation periods Results: Application of the Root-Cause Investigation Framework at Lagos MMIA, Abuja NAIA, Kano MAKIA, and Port Harcourt PHIA documented a total of 47 recurring wildlife hazard locations across the four airports, with root-cause analysis identifying habitat attraction as the primary causal category at 62 percent of locations, structural facilitation at 19 percent, management system deficiency at 11 percent, institutional coordination failure at 6 percent, and ecological pressure as the sole root cause at 2 percent of locations. Corrective action implementation for the 23 highest-priority locations resulted in quantified hazard frequency reduction averaging 71 percent at twelve-month post-intervention assessment Conclusion: The Root-Cause Investigation Framework provides NCAA and airport operators with the systematic analytical methodology needed to transform recurring wildlife hazard management from reactive incident response toward root-cause based prevention, achieving sustained hazard frequency reduction through the elimination of causal factors rather than only the temporary suppression of wildlife presence through reactive dispersal that does not address the underlying ecological, operational, or organizational conditions that generate persistent wildlife hazard patterns
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