Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
In North-Rhine Westfalia (western Germany), in the area of the river Rhine, between the town of Duisburg and the Dutch-German border thousands of wild geese winter every year. Most of them are bean geese (Anser fabalis) but about 12-22% are greater white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons). Since the middle sixties goose numbers in this area increased rapidly. Presently there are 22,000-24,000 geese at winter maximum. At the same time the concentration of wintering geese is moving north because more feeding sites and roosts have been sacrificed for industry and recreation; as a result, complaints about goose damage have increased. In order to save a goose wintering area of great international importance, to stop constantly increasing disturbance and destruction of roosts and feeding sites by humans, and to make it easier to compensate for possible goose damage and solve the problems between farmers and geese, it is imperative to create a network of protected goose refuges along the Rhine.
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/literatr/disturb/bibli138.htm
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