The Goose Specialist Group of both Wetlands International and the IUCN-Species Survival Commission seeks to strengthen contacts between all researchers on migratory goose populations in the northern hemisphere. Annual meetings are held since 1995. At present about 400 people have joined this Specialist Group.

Congratulations to Bart Ebbinge, Goose SG Chair, who has been awarded the Golden Brent Goose Feather Award in 2010. (click here for more information)

Name and Contact Details Coordinators
Western Palearctic
Historically the focus of the Group is on migratory geese in the western  palearctic and a database with goose censuses from the western palearctic is maintained by a network of national co-ordinators. The present Global Coordinator is Dr Barwolt S. Ebbinge (Bart.Ebbinge@wur.nl), based at the Centre for Ecosystem Studies at Alterra in Wageningen (Wageningen University and Research Centre), the Netherlands. The Group maintains close contacts with goose researchers in North America and East Asia.

North America
More recently contacts with researchers in North America are more firmly established and the tri-annual North American Arctic Goose Conferences (NAAG) are now visited regularly by European and Asian goose workers as well. Dr Ray Alisauskas (Ray.Alisauskas@ec.gc.ca) based at the Canadian Wildlife Service in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada) is the liaison officer for North America.

East Asia
Links with goose researchers in East Asia are maintained by Dr Masayuki Kurechi of the Japanese Association for the Protection of Wild Geese (hgh02256@niftyserve.or.jp) in Wakayanagi (Japan). The 4th annual meeting of the Goose Specialist Group was held in Japan to improve contacts with goose researchers in East Asia. This was in January 1999 in Matsushima Bay. Also members of the Russian Goose and Swan Study Group strengthen the link with East Asia, because they are involved in studies both in the western palearctic and in East Asia.

Structure of the Group
Under the umbrella of the Group separate working groups deal with special topics, e.g. the Lesser White-fronted Goose Working Group, which focuses on the globally threatened Lesser White-fronted Goose. Also other working groups are mainly species oriented, e.g. the Grey-lag Goose Working Group, The Bean Goose Working Group, the Red-breasted Goose Working Group, etc.

On the web-site www.geese.org/gsg information about these working groups can be found.

A major achievement of the Group is an impressive compilation (edited by Jesper Madsen, Tony Fox and Gill Cracknell) of the current knowledge of the status and distribution of the goose populations of the western palearctic. Through the Group individual marking programmes of geese (with coloured and engraved leg-rings and neck-collars) are being co-ordinated within the western palearctic.

Communication and Website
In the past special bulletins were printed and mailed around by the Danish National Environmental Research Institute, but now we only print the abstracts of papers presented at the Annual Meetings as a special booklet. Proceedings of the 6th annual meeting (Roosta, Estonia) have been printed, and those of the three subsequent meetings are still being edited.

For the Goose Specialist Group Bulletin 10, click here.
More extensive information about the Goose Specialist Group can be found on the special website  www.geese.org/gsg.

Meetings of the Goose Specialist Group

The 13th meeting of the Goose Specialist Group will be held jointly with the Goose, Swan and Duck Study Group (GSDSG) of northern Eurasia in Elista, Kalmykia (Russian Federation) from Thursday 24 March to Tuesday 29 March 2011 with a mid-conference excursion to the Manych Lake on Saturday 26 March 2011.
If sufficient numbers of people are interested, a 5-day post-conference excursion will be organized.

The scientific programme is in the capable hands of Aleksandr (Sascha) Kondratyev. Konstantin Litvin is the central link between the GSG-board and the GSDSG, and Sonia Rozenfeld and Petr Glazov are responsible for local organisation and all practical arrangements. More extensive information and the registration form can be found on http://onlinereg.ru/Elista2011 (Russian) or http://onlinereg.ru/site.php?go=153&lang=ENG (English).

The 12th meeting was organized in the centre of the goose areas in SW Sweden at Höllviken, from 9 – 14 October 2009. The main theme of the conference was “The expanding goose populations and their management”. The organizing committee will be chaired by Leif Nilsson, and further consists of Barwolt Ebbinge, Tony Fox, Thomas Heinicke, Konstantin Litvin, Jesper Madsen and Petteri Tolvanen. We invited some keynote speakers on this theme and also invited researchers to give an overview of the development within some important populations and other aspects of the expanding goose populations and their management. Special attention was given to those goose populations that are not faring so well, e.g. the Taiga Bean Goose and the Lesser White-fronted Goose. For more information click here.

The 11th meeting of the group took place in 2008 in Ladakh, India to focus again on the goose populations of Central and East Asia.
The 10th meeting was held in January/February 2007 in Xanten, Germany.

Arctic Birds Breeding Conditions Survey