Are declining populations of wild geese in China ‘prisoners’ of their natural habitats
Time:2021-05-10Source: 原创 Hits:
Yu, H., Wang, X., Cao, L., Zhang, L., Jia, Q., Lee, H., Xu, Z., Liu,
G., Xu, W., Hu, B. and Fox, A.D., 2017. Are declining populations of
wild geese in China ‘prisoners’ of their natural habitats?. Current
Biology, 27(10), pp.R376-R377. (鸿雁,豆雁,白额雁,小白额雁,灰雁,HGMT_NC, 26g)
While wild goose populations wintering in North America and Europe are
mostly flourishing by exploiting farmland, those in China (which seem
confined to natural wetlands) are generally declining. Telemetry devices
were attached to 67 wintering wild geese of five different species at
three important wetlands in the Yangtze River Floodplain (YRF), China to
determine habitat use. 50 individuals of three declining species were
almost entirely diurnally confined to natural wetlands; 17 individuals
from two species showing stable trends used wetlands 83% and 90% of the
time, otherwise resorting to farmland. These results confirm earlier
studies linking declines among Chinese wintering geese to natural
habitat loss and degradation affecting food supply. These results also
contribute to explaining the poor conservation status of Chinese
wintering geese compared to the same and other goose species wintering
in adjacent Korea and Japan, western Europe and North America, which
feed almost entirely on agricultural land, liberating them from winter
population limitation.