Those darn shrimp at LAX

I found the conclusion of C.C. Kraemer column Fairy Shrimp vs. Man a little over the top (well, maybe even way over the top). As a regular user of Los Angeles International Airport, however, I couldn't agree more with the basic gist of the column:

The [fairy] shrimp lives -- exists? -- in a depression at the end of a runway [at LAX]. Officials have fenced off 108 acres for its privileged use, even though no shrimp worth eating has been found there, just eggs that haven't yet hatched, even after having been in the spot for years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants the area to be designated as a preserve for the fairy shrimp. That probably sounds reasonable, since the property is likely to sit idle because of its location. Who would want it for anything? But an argument by LAX officials demonstrates that this is yet another case of man forcing man to yield to a lower life form.

It's not that the relatively small tract has been set aside. It's the ripple effect that area would have. Designating the area as a preserve for the fairy shrimp would require it to have standing water. That attracts birds. Though they both have wings and fly, birds and aircraft do not mix well.

Sometimes the results are disastrous. Yeah, it makes a mess of the bird. But too often it's equally as ruinous for humans. Jetliners full of passengers have been known to go down after sucking birds into their engines.

Takeoff is a critical moment for a flight. If something is thrown off -- even a bird being chewed up by a turbofan engine with 65,000 pounds of thrust -- it makes the takeoff that much more difficult. The Bird Strike Committee USA, made up partly of federal and aviation industry officials, says that a 12-lb Canada goose hitting an aircraft traveling 150-mph at lift-off is similar to the force created when a 1,000-lb weight is dropped from a height of 10 feet. That should be enough to violate the structural integrity of the hull of any jetliner.

Species preservation is an important goal, but the species I care most about is the human one. Fill in the depression.