Fersiwn Gymraeg ar gael yma.
As the first swallows and warblers start to arrive in Wales, the longer days also trigger a restlessness in our winter migrants to head home.
For Greenland white-fronted geese that means a long journey northwest, initially a non-stop flight from Wales to Iceland following the west coast of Scotland, then across the North Atlantic. By late May they will be on the move again flying all the way to western Greenland. A grand total of around 2,000 miles. Most Greenland whitefronts spend the winter in Ireland and the Hebrides of Scotland, but small numbers live in Wales. They used to be far more widespread here, perhaps around 1,100 birds a century ago, but they now occur regularly in only two places. This winter, there were up to 30 on the Dyfi estuary in mid Wales and 19 on Anglesey.
The latest estimate is that there are only 22,000 left in the world, so although Wales holds only a small proportion, every bird count. Numbers have crashed because they haven’t been producing enough chicks since the mid-1990s, partly a result of increased amounts of snow and lower spring temperatures on their Greenland breeding grounds. To have the best chance of breeding successfully, the adults need to leave Wales in tip-top condition. Management by farmers, including by RSPB Cymru at our RSPB Ynys-hir reserve on the Dyfi estuary and RSPB Cors Ddyga on Anglesey, can provide nutritious grass but the birds need plenty of time to graze, so avoiding disturbance is crucial.
Like most conservation successes, working together achieves change. A Wales Greenland white-fronted goose partnership has provided a focus for work to protect the birds, involving RSPB Cymru, Natural Resources Wales (NRW), The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, British Association of Shooting and Conservation and local wildfowling clubs. Our staff and our grazing tenants on the Dyfi, working with NRW, are very careful not to disturb the geese, and we are grateful to the wildfowlers on the estuary for following a voluntary ban on shooting Greenland whitefronts since 1972. But across Wales, the geese could be shot during the hunting season - on Anglesey, for example, 29 were shot between 1998 and 2010. Wales and England were the only countries with Greenland white-fronts that permitted hunting. For a Red-listed bird in steep decline, this didn’t seem right – and international experts agreed. AEWA (an international water bird agreement) told the UK governments that a voluntary agreement was not sufficient to meet its legal obligations.
Aaron Davies, from Swansea, shared that concern and gathered names of several thousand people who agreed, submitting a petition to the National Assembly for Wales in March 2014. The Welsh Government initially rejected the call, but backed by evidence from the Welsh Ornithological Society and experts such as Dr Tony Fox, the Senedd Petitions Committee asked the Welsh Government to reconsider. It undertook a public consultation in 2016, but although organisations such as RSPB Cymru, WOS, The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and the government’s own advisers NRW backed a ban on shooting, there was no change in the law.
But the petition was effective in raising the political profile of Greenland white-fronted geese and prompted Welsh Government to fund the partnership to fit satellite-transmitters to a couple of geese on the Dyfi in 2017 to understand how the birds used the landscape. In this BBC News report, our warden Tom explains how this worked. One goose flew to Ireland, illustrating that Ynys-hir is just one part of a network of sites that the birds use around the Irish Sea. The other stayed with the flock on the Dyfi, mostly using pasture fields but also feeding on the saltmarsh. The following spring, both tagged birds flew to Iceland; one returned to the Dyfi in the following two winters; the other spent both winters on Coll and time at RSPB Loch Gruinart on Islay (both RSPB Scotland nature reserves), further showing how their winter sites are connected.
Behind the scenes, RSPB Cymru and others continued to press Welsh Government to give the geese greater protection, and we were delighted when Minister Hannah Blythyn announced that Greenland white-fronted geese would be removed from the list of birds that can be shot. Today that becomes law. It’s taken six years, good science, a partnership of people who care about the birds, and a lot of talking and listening. Next October, we’ll be looking out for the returning geese, hopefully with a few more juveniles, knowing that they are now better protected during their winter stay winter in Wales. As they pass overhead, we’re sure they’ll give a little nod to Aaron and everyone else who supported the shooting ban.