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Snow Goose Population Problem Part II
Working Toward a Solution

By

Mike Johnson

Originally published in:
North Dakota Outdoors
(September-October, 1996)

Official Publication of the
State Game and Fish Department
100 North Bismarck Expressway
Bismarck, North Dakota 58501-5095

Editor's note: Last month, Part I of this story dealt with the developing ecological crisis relating to the overpopulation of snow geese. We looked at the reasons for the continuing population increase, and how that population is affecting fragile arctic nesting grounds. This month, we look at what is being done, and what can be done, to solve the problem.

Migratory game birds are an international treasure. The past 100 years have produced heroic efforts to protect and increase numbers of ducks, geese, swans and other migratory game birds.

We have negotiated and amended international treaties, enacted countless congressional and parliamentary acts, and state and local laws and regulations. We have created refuges, purchased and leased land, planted cover and food crops, fought diseases, pesticides and toxicants, battled habitat destruction and degradation, regulated and restricted hunting in every conceivable fashion, all for the sole purpose of maintaining and increasing populations of migratory birds, especially waterfowl.

State, provincial, territorial, national and native people governments, private organizations, citizens and hunters have worked tirelessly to raise money and implement these actions. No other resource issue in the world has received more attention than the conservation of Western Hemisphere waterfowl.

Now, for the first time, we are faced with a serious overabundance of an international waterfowl population - snow geese.

The population objective for the MidContinent Population is 1 - 1.5 million birds as measured by the mid-December survey. The 1994 inventory was 2.7 million birds and was only slightly lower in 1995. The actual population may be two to three times larger than indicated by the mid-December index.

This large and growing snow goose population presents a serious problem for which we have no history or experience to guide our way. Biologists, managers, administrators and elected officials must now deal with a situation that contradicts generations of effort dedicated to building and maintaining populations.

Mike Johnson is the Game and Fish Department's migratory game bird management supervisor.

Table of Contents

• What has been done?
  
• What can be done?
  

Snow Goose Population Problem: Part I
Snow Goose Population Problem: Part III - Arctic Ecosystems in Peril