Case Study: Lesser Snow Goose

Since the 1960s, the Lesser Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens caerulescens) population has been exponentially increasing. This may be attributed to the abundant food that is present in the wintering grounds. New foods available since the 1960 include high energy grains that fatten up the snow geese. Since it is so large, however, it is difficult to obtain an accurate estimate of the population size, but it is believed to be about 6 million in the 1990s, making it the largest population of all waterfowl in North America. With such a large population, one would generally believe the population is doing well. However, it has been determined that the body size of snow geese and survival rate of goslings has decreased because of the severe habitat degradation caused by the overabundance of snow geese. With such a large population, they frequently overgraze the grass.
Management Actions
In 1999, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) attempted to find a way to control the population more directly. Previously, there was hunting regulations because of the Migratory Bird Act, but with such large population numbers, the regulations were lessened  This was done by the Light Geese Conservation Order. This order created more open seasons just to hunt these geese and bag limits no longer exist which will hopefully reduce the population numbers, for thus far, it hasn't made a dent in the populations. In fact, the populations continue to grow as they previously did even with these new limited restrictions. New management strategies must be implemented before these geese ruin more Arctic lands, which in turn affect other wildlife as well as there own population. Some suggestions have been to encourage hunters to hunt the geese and to maintain the harvest protocols of no bag limits and extended seasons as well as going to nesting sites and controlling the egg populations.