Geese death toll now under study

Press, 15 August 1986, Page 17

Geese death toll now under study

Scientists from tbe Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, are leading a three-week expedition to find out why many of the Arctic’s migrating barnacle geese perish on the 3200 km journey to their winter home in Britain, reports Colin Cross of the London Press Service.

Dr Myrtyn Owen, assistant director of research at the Wildfowl Trust, the trust curator, Mike Ounsted, a research student, Jeff Black and 18 volunteers from the American group Earthwatch, have left for the Norwegian territory of Spitzbergen, where they will catch and ring barnacle geese spending the summer in the Arctic.

In the autumn, another expedition will watch the start of the migration, and later a further British group will catch and count the barnacle geese wintering-over in Scotland. The large death toll of the Arctic barnacle geese — there are also separate barnacle geese colonies in Siberia and Greenland — ironically comes at a time when numbers have increased from only 3W migrating birds in 1954 to today’s 10,*M. But the worry is the 20M geese that are not expected to survive the journey to Britain. Dr Owen says “We shall be seeking the causes of this, large loss and how we can help to prevent it. We believe, the

growth in the numbers of barnacle geese could be the cause of tbe high mortality, young being reared to maturity less successfully possibly because of increased competition.’’ Already Slimbridge is working with Norway to improve tbe feeding on the Helgoland islands, where geese spend part of the year. Depopulation and the removal of cattle from the Islands has resulted in a decline in the quality of grass. Efforts are being made to increase the stock on the islands and improve the quality of feed.

At the same time as they count the geese when they arrive in Scotland, the trust scientists will test them to find out if they are affected by radiation from the Russian nuclear reactor disaster at Chernobyl. The geese were migrating in an area which was covered by the cloud of radioactive dust, and tests will try to show if fertility has been affected. But Dr Owen believes that earlier pessimistic forecasts of the Chernobyl disaster having catastrophic efforts on bird life will prove to be unfounded.

“In the 19895, when the Russians carried out atmospheric tests near to sites occupied by birds, we did not find evidence that these had significantly affected the birdlife,” Dr Owen says. “This is one area where we do take an optimistic view.”