North America’s snow geese—one of the most abundant goose species in the world and a popular target for waterfowl hunters across the continent—are in the midst of a shocking decline. According to Ducks Unlimited, the midcontinent lesser snow and Ross geese populations, which breed in the Arctic and migrate along the Central and Mississippi flyways, have dropped to their lowest numbers in 30 years.
In 2022, researchers estimated the lesser snow goose population to be less than 5 million geese, down from a peak of around 20 million in 2007. Mitch Weegman, Ducks Unlimited Endowed Chair in Wetland and Waterfowl Conservation at the University of Saskatchewan, tells Split Reed there are several reasons for the precipitous decline.
“Productivity has been very low for eight years in a row,” says Weegman. “There has been an increase in multi-day rain events right around the time the birds are hatching. So, you have millions of new goslings during storms with temperatures of around 34 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. They get hypothermia, and we have mass mortality events.”
Weegman says that the unusual timing of the rain events may stem from changing weather patterns due to climate change. He adds that the mortality events have compounding impacts; because certain age classes have had these mass mortality events, they aren’t able to breed. Overall, the population of snows is becoming older and having less reproductive success.
“It’s becoming a self-fulfilling pattern,” says Weegman, who notes that avian influenza could also be impacting the population. “Productivity will continue to decline.”
What to Make of the Surprising Trend
The recent decline of snow geese is shocking, in part, because of how recently scientists worried about their population growth. In the 1990s, biologists noticed that snow geese were shifting their winter grounds from marshes bordering the Gulf Coast to the nutrient-rich ag waste in the region. This caused the population to skyrocket—and scientists started reporting detriments to breeding ground habitat in the Arctic.
In response, wildlife managers instituted the Light Goose Conservation Order in 1999, which used liberal spring seasons to increase the harvest of adult snow geese and prevent overpopulation. However, hunters were unable to make a real dent in the geese numbers, and the harvest rate has hovered at just 2 to 3 percent of the population. Fortunately, though, concerns about the geese ruining a significant portion of the habitat in the Arctic tundra turned out to be unfounded.
Now, Weegman says the recent population drop is cause for concern, but that it’s too soon for goose hunters to panic. Hunting regulations won’t be changed unless waterfowl take exceeds 11 percent of the adult population—a threshold that remains far off. For now, at least.
“They’re still one of the most abundant goose populations on the planet,” says Weegman. “But it’s always concerning when you have fluctuations that are this serious. For a while, we were losing a million snow geese a year. That’s incredible.”
“Should hunters be worried about snow geese going extinct? I don’t think so,” he adds. “Should they be worried about dramatic population changes resulting in huge changes to the landscape in terms of how many geese they see in future hunting opportunities? Yes.”
Still, Weegman holds out hope that the populations can bounce back quickly, given the right conditions, because they’ve been able to expand so rapidly in the past.