Netherlands 2020
Netherlands 2020
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19th Symposium, 28-31 January 2020
The 19th Meeting of the Goose Specialist Group was held in Leeuwarden, in the province of Friesland in The Netherlands, from 28-31 January 2020. The Netherlands is one of the most important countries for migratory geese in Europe, with peak numbers of wintering geese amounting to c. 2 million. Within the country, about 40% of wintering numbers concentrate in the province of Friesland, which is why its capital, the cozy town of Leeuwarden, was chosen as the ideal location for the GSG meeting.
The meeting was jointly hosted by Sovon Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology and Vogeltrekstation Dutch Centre for Avian Migration and Demography NIOO-KNAW at “De Harmonie” in the Centre of Leeuwarden. No fewer than 141 delegates from 20 countries joined the four-day meeting, and that makes the 19th edition of the Goose Specialist Group meeting one of the largest in the history of the group.
Participants of the 19th Meeting of the Goose Specialist Group, Leeuwarden 28-31 January 2020, in the conference hall (Photo Henk van der Jeugd).
There were three conference days, filled with presentations and a one-day excursion on Thursday. Each of the conference days was started by a 45 minute plenary lecture. In order of appearance, these were given by Ingunn Tombre on Tuesday, Jeff Black on Wednesday and Stuart Bearhop on Friday.
Ingunn set off showing that addressing sensitive issues around rising goose numbers takes more than just ecology, and illustrated this with case studies from Norway where problems are solved within an inter- and transdisciplinary framework involving many stakeholders, but without losing the assets, that geese most certainly are, out of sight.
On Wednesday, Jeff Black took this further and put the ‘assets’ - the geese - in a central position and taught us all some lessons from nature in Northern California. Finally, on Friday, Stuart Bearhop showed how climate, population density, food availability and other factors during winter and spring can influence demographics of high-arctic breeding geese. This is important, because the notion that what we do in terms of management in the wintering areas can have expected as well as unexpected repercussions during other parts of the annual cycle is ever more important.
Each of these excellent plenary lectures served as introductions to other speakers that treated us on a wide variety of stories, adventures, and important findings. One of the highlights undoubtedly was the talk by Diana Solovyeva, who lifted the ‘curtain of secrecy’ just enough for a peak into the newly discovered, inaccessible moulting grounds of the lesser white-fronted goose in East Asia, but made us all promise to never go there and leave them in peace.
A highlight of an entirely different nature was the talk by Julia Stahl about the ability of grass swards to rapidly recover from heavy grazing in spring, shedding new light on the way damage is being assessed and compensation paid to farmers in the Netherlands, a story that most certainly will get a sequel. But to be honest, there were many, many talks that were noteworthy in all kinds of respects, and it is fantastic to see how the scientific level of the contributions is steadily growing with every GSG meeting. On Tuesday evening, Herbert Prins evaluated this in his own, special way. He summarized 50 years of goose research in just under two hours, skilfully manoeuvring so that everyone in the audience was at least mentioned, but also painfully exposing that we attempt to address the same questions over and over again, albeit with ever more sophisticated tools and statistics, but never quite getting to the point where we truly understand, let alone can predict, what is going on with populations of wild geese. This, he proclaimed, may be the faith of us ecologists, because nature is too complicated for us to ever really comprehend. Like he started, he therefore ended his lecture with the observation that what really drives us is the ambition to sit around campfires in remote places sipping whisky or vodka, and telling great stories. And a great story it was indeed!
On Wednesday evening, Kees Polderdijk, told us a wonderful and funny inside-story about traditional goose catching in The Netherlands, a craft practised by just a handful of devotees who catch and ring geese for science, and whose work is instrumental in maintaining the ringing effort of wild geese in The Netherlands at an adequate level. The next day, we saw two of these goose catchers in action during the excursion.
For many of us, this was the first time to witness this traditional and effective way of catching wild geese in The Netherlands. Due to the warm weather, we did not quite see the numbers of geese that we had hoped for, but still enough flocks of mainly barnacle geese and some white-fronted geese could be scanned in search of leg rings and neckbands, that the participants immediately reported through the Birdring-app. The morning shift was just in time to witness thousands of barnacle geese leaving their roost at lake IJsselmeer together at dusk.
The whole Tuesday afternoon was devoted to the AEWA European Goose Management Platform, that addresses the conservation and management of declining, as well as growing, goose populations in Europe by a coordinated flyway approach. Adaptive management plans are currently being formulated for three goose species (barnacle goose, greylag goose and taiga bean goose), while a fourth one, for the pink-footed goose, is already in place. There were presentations on the development of population models, survival analyses, the impact of shooting, and more. It became clear that building these models is not an easy task, but the case of the pink-footed goose, for which an adaptive harvest management plan is in place and functioning, showed that it can be done.
The last talks were on Friday morning, after which a prize was awarded for the best talk. This year that prize went to Romke Kleefstra, for his excellent account of the growing population of resident, breeding white-fronted geese in the province of Fryslân. Then it was time for concluding remarks, during which the meeting was summarised by three words: conflict - the rising goose numbers result in ever more conflicts, and the goose research community is more and more involved in addressing these conflicts and trying to resolve them using a scientific approach, as witnessed by the many talks about this subject. But we must remain critical, and speak out when we see arguments being twisted and truth being bent, and geese lose out in favour of economic gain. Change – we are seeing rapid, and maybe unprecedented changes in goose distribution, migration routes and habits. Discovering these changes is exciting, geese are adapting to a changing world, but for how long will they cope? Tracking – Never before have we have so many talks where new tracking technology proved instrumental in revealing exciting new patterns. Thanks to these technological advances we are now capable of addressing questions in ever greater detail, but do not let the technology get the upper hand: still, a keen eye, a pair of binoculars, pen, paper and a sharp mind may lead to the best ideas!
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