Wednesday, November 17, 2010

details on snow goose populations are astounding. increased historicaly but gosling survival is down...tundra damage extensive up north..changed migra

2 comments:

Unknown said...

these incomplete tidbit articles are of little value; love to hear updates about the refuge but if you want to post cant you please put up at least a full paragraph?

BosqueNM said...

Yes, sorry- I was having problems posting as the RV place did not have wifi and I was using my android phone and should have spent more time doing the posts, but was limited in time with all the workshops and everything!'
My next blog post reads "migration patterns changed older population of snow geese now, but a very large population./ android phone limits text ..apologies"
I was writing about a lecture/workshop by John Vradenburg, senior biologist at BdA. I'll ask him if he will give me a lot of the content of the 2 hour talk and slide show which was called Snow Goose Ecology, and I will post a link to that when available (Friends' web site at FriendsoftheBosque.org)
He said they were seeing major shifts in traditional migration patterns; and are seeing a current population of 6-9 million birds with some estimates of up to 20 mil (light geese 1982, there were 1.7 mil) One of the problems is that they are not seeing many juveniles, and the average age of light geese is 12-15 years old with some banded birds being 27 years old. They are seeing a very low gosling survival, but yet a high population which is affecting the health of the tundra, thus, there is a lot of discussion of what needs to be done.