(above) somewhere beautiful at Ynys Hir Yesterday
At last! The waiting is over! I can now stop biting my nails, pacing the hallway in to the early hours of the morning and get a first decent nights sleep in weeks.
Because yes you’ve guessed it (or maybe not) the Geese are back in town! Or more accurately the Greenland white fronted geese have returned a to their winter feeding ground at RSPB Ynys Hir!
for the past 20 years around the second week of October the Greenland white fronts arrive at Ynys Hir but this year for some unknown reason they arrived weeks later than usual.
The white fronts that can be spotted on at Ynys Hir are a close knit bunch. The parents lead young birds on their first trip and family groups feeding and roosting together on the saltmarsh and pasture fields surrounding the estuary. As well as being late there are also fewer and fewer of them very year. Their numbers have worryingly declined from 167 in the late 1990’s to a mere 55 birds last year. If we that knowledge passed down the generations is lost it will be gone forever.
The exact reason for the decline is unclear, but their poor breeding success in Greenland is considered the primary contributor, studies are underway to find out the exact cause(s) for this.
Despite the critically low numbers returning to Wales annually there is currently no legal ban on hunting this species
There has been a long-standing voluntary agreement by wildfowling clubs preventing the shooting of Greenland white-fronted geese on part of the Dyfi Estuary. The voluntary ban has played an important role in safeguarding the geese. However, there is evidence that the geese are using other areas in north and mid Wales and feeding on farmland away from the estuary where there is no voluntary agreement in place to protect the geese.
RSPB Cymru and other conservation organisations have been pushing for a complete hunting ban on the geese but were dismayed earlier this year when the Welsh Government decided against introducing an outright ban, preferring an extension of the existing voluntary protection on part of the Dyfi estuary.
Thats why The RSPB is supporting the aims of this recently launched petition (already 2,400 plus signatures in a short time) calling on the Welsh Government to introduce a legal ban on the shooting of Greenland white-fronted geese in Wales. You can sign the petition here
http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/welsh-assembly-government-ban-the-shooting-of-greenland-white-fronted-goose