Can Anything Stop the Explosion of Snow Geese in the Western Arctic?

On a comfortable stretch of tundra,  the place Alaska’s Colville River seeps and braids towards the close by Beaufort Sea, Dan Ruthrauff bends to look at the sedges. His rubber boots squelch within the moist give of mossy floor on this August night. Each blade in sight is gnawed, its tip dried brown. “This was once a meadow,” he says, gesturing to a mile-wide space the place Lapland Longspurs, plovers, and sandpipers as soon as flourished in lush, calf-high vegetation. Now it’s a placing inexperienced, shorn by one of many Pacific Flyway’s fastest-growing colonies of Lesser Snow Geese—birds that, till lately, hadn’t nested on Alaska’s coastal plain in vital numbers.

Ruthrauff, a shorebird biologist on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Alaska Science Center, and his colleague Vijay Patil, a goose skilled, have been coming to this distant discipline camp most summers since 2015. They create a hodgepodge of scientists to check birds and habitat in one of many world’s most fragile and quickly warming areas. Once they began, Snow Geese weren’t a part of their analysis. “By dumb luck, we bumbled into this Snow Goose explosion,” Ruthrauff says.

In 2017, Ruthrauff and Patil counted round a dozen Snow Goose nests on the roughly 400-acre research plot nearest camp. 5 years later they tallied greater than 300. “It was wall to wall with Snow Goose nests,” Patil recollects. “As you had been mountain climbing, they went to the horizon.” By 2023, the colony—which now spans the Colville Delta—had grown to 40,000 grownup geese, aerial surveys confirmed. Biologists from the North Slope Borough (a county-like physique of villages on this majority-Iñupiaq area) recorded comparable tendencies on the Ikpikpuk River Delta, simply west, that started a decade earlier.

The pattern is worrisomely acquainted. Though such a dramatic improve is new to the Western Arctic, it mirrors the earliest section of a devastating cycle of Snow Goose growth, ecosystem destruction, and inhabitants collapse that has already performed out within the Central Arctic, regardless of efforts to reverse it. Over the previous half century, that area’s booming flocks made the Lesser Snow Goose probably the most considerable waterfowl species on Earth—and stretched North American wildlife administration methods to their restrict. Ruthrauff says that within the West, now “you possibly can see historical past repeating itself.” 

Whereas nobody is aware of if this area will endure the identical diploma of destruction, Ruthrauff and different biologists consider the time to forestall that risk is brief. Wildlife managers are already elevating questions on whether or not and the right way to intervene, and the info Ruthrauff and Patil are gathering on the delta may assist present solutions. However a bigger query looms: Will we break the cycle? 

Few individuals ever go to the northernmost locations that migratory waterfowl rely upon. Western scientists didn’t see a Snow Goose breeding website till 1929, regardless of years of looking out—although Indigenous individuals have lengthy coexisted with these birds. Even as we speak researchers don’t journey to the farthest-flung breeding colonies. 

The remainder of the 12 months, although, these white or generally blue-gray birds create spectacles that many within the Decrease 48 know properly, amassing on wetlands and fields as they journey long-established routes: Every fall, within the Pacific Flyway, Lesser Snow Geese from Alaska, northwest Canada, and Russia fly in lengthy bursts to wintering grounds that stretch from Washington to California. Within the two midcontinent flyways, sprawling V formations depart from Canada’s Central Arctic and head for Southwestern and South Central states. Within the east, Larger Snow Geese, a bigger subspecies, keep on with the Atlantic seaboard, beginning in Greenland or japanese Nunavut and flying so far as North Carolina.

I first witnessed a winter congregation of Snow Geese at a refuge within the floodplains of New Mexico’s Rio Grande. By nightfall the water was white and honking with tens of 1000’s of them. Photographers hugged tripods that held lenses bigger than their thighs, and households bundled in blankets. A hush fell over the marsh, then the birds took off in a spontaneous combustion of wings, curling upward from one facet of the flock to the opposite till the whole sky was geese. They arced over us, then again, and resettled on the water in a seething layer of life. Cameras snapped. Sandhill Cranes squawked. Folks gasped in awe.

Such a present makes it exhausting to consider these birds had been as soon as so uncommon that, in 1916, searching them was banned. By the Nineteen Sixties, they’d made a surprising restoration. As midcentury American farmers consolidated wheat, corn, and rice onto ever bigger monocrop acreages, the adaptable birds shifted from winter wetlands onto these easy-eating fields. Each spring they returned fats to the Arctic to breed. Each autumn much more flew south.

Within the Seventies, researchers started warning that this wasn’t the success story it appeared. Geese graze by tearing crops out by their roots—a habits known as grubbing that makes them particularly damaging. Swelling colonies in Manitoba left barren swaths round Hudson Bay, portending ecosystem collapse that might hurt geese, shorebirds, and even Snow Geese themselves. By 1975, when states reopened Snow Goose searching, the midcontinent inhabitants had grown to an estimated 1.6 million birds. Within the ’80s it topped 5 million; by the late ’90s, 10 million.

Robert Rockwell, an ecologist who has studied Snow Geese in Manitoba since 1968, and different main waterfowl scientists known as the phenomenon a humiliation of riches: an anthropogenic drawback that folks must resolve. The potential ecological devastation made headlines, however the plight of the birds additionally struck a chord. Though consultants warned it could be too late to manage the inhabitants with out massive culls, public sentiment was strongly towards them. Waterfowl managers needed to discover different avenues.

In 1997 the Arctic Goose Joint Enterprise—a United States–Canada collaboration of scientists, wildlife managers, authorities officers, and conservationists—initially put every thing on the desk. The concepts they outlined included paying hunters to shoot extra geese, legalizing business harvest, instituting large-scale culls for meals financial institution donation, and inspiring First Nations communities to take extra eggs. (A longstanding ban on egg assortment beneath the Migratory Hen Treaty Act, lifted two years prior, was a part of the US’ and Canada’s systematic oppression of Indigenous practices and a potential issue within the goose’s exponential rise.)

However because the group acknowledged, most concepts—particularly these almost certainly to work—had been costly, had been logistically troublesome, or risked public pushback. So federal companies carried out only some, issuing orders that allowed hunters greater bag limits, further searching instruments, and expanded harvest seasons. Even these measures proved so controversial that animal rights teams in each international locations sued to cease them. They took impact in the US solely after Congress, pressed by scientists like Rockwell, handed the 1999 Arctic Tundra Habitat Emergency Conservation Act.

The legislation created unprecedented searching entry within the Atlantic and midcontinent flyways, the place flocks had been rising quickest. In consequence, japanese hunters curtailed Larger Snow Geese development, preserving them at fewer than 1 million—wanting the administration goal of 500,000, however comparatively steady. For midcontinent geese, although, intervention got here too late. Officers had hoped searching may halve the inhabitants by 2005 by harvesting greater than 5 million birds. However as consultants foresaw, hunters simply couldn’t sustain. By 2014 goose numbers doubled once more, surpassing 21 million. 

The one palatable instruments had failed. Although the three way partnership had suggested reconsidering different methods beneath such circumstances, decision-makers’ worry of public backlash proved insurmountable. Quickly after, midcontinent geese started their long-foreshadowed collapse. Overgrazing wasn’t the one issue: Local weather change additionally made Central Arctic situations extra hostile, says Mitch Weegman, a College of Saskatchewan biologist who oversees one among Canada’s largest goose analysis stations. At that website, on Nunavut’s Karrak Lake, strengthening storms decimated whole generations of goslings, and shortly adults stopped coming again. By 2022 the midcontinent inhabitants had fallen under 5 million, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) estimates.

Goose numbers had lastly plummeted, however the birds left behind altered ecosystems. It was “the success of my fears,” says Rockwell. Whereas some areas are exhibiting indicators of restoration, their rebound is predicted to take many years. Different swaths of affected habitat, in the meantime, are probably past restoration. 

Across the time midcontinent colonies began crashing, biologists in Alaska, California, and Washington started issuing their very own warnings, echoing Rockwell’s from many years earlier than. The long-stable Pacific Flyway inhabitants was rising, and quick. The area’s largest colonies are in Canada and Russia, however they’re troublesome to entry, attributable to geography and struggle—making Alaska’s North Slope the most effective locations to research the increase. 

Near camp on the Colville Delta, we stroll south, previous our tents and electrified bear fence to an space the place Snow Geese haven’t but nested in massive numbers. The comparability to the barren, muddy northern plot is stark: Right here, we discover plovers, sandpipers, phalaropes, and ptarmigans hidden in rolling mounds of grasses and willows. Jaegers fly overhead, probably stalking the birds under.

Round us, the season is shifting: This week the solar started setting for the primary time since spring, and birds, foxes, caribou, musk ox, and grizzlies are making ready for fall. Now that Snow Geese chicks have fledged, flocks have ventured throughout the tundra to search out extra meals. We hear them honking from behind a low, permafrost-lifted ridge. They’ll’t go far; the adults are molting, so they’re briefly rendered flightless. That’s why we’re right here now: It’s the quick annual window when these scrappy birds are best to catch.

Over 4 days, this small crew goals to band 2,000 Snow Geese and Black Brant, a West Coast conservation precedence species that’s particularly susceptible to habitat degradation. Such banding excursions present information that wildlife companies depend on to information administration choices, together with annual searching guidelines. For Snow Geese, it may additionally assist make the case for taking different conservation measures.

On an overcast morning, I squeeze behind Patil into the again seat of a helicopter to start an extended day herding and dealing with geese. The pilot takes us low over the tundra, above polygons of inexperienced ridges and small ponds and mudflat expanses that stretch between river and sea. “Should you see a bunch of white dots on the bottom, give a shout,” Patil says over his helmet mic. “I’m searching for just a few hundred in a bunch.”

He spots a knot of geese to our proper, then factors the pilot towards an even bigger group farther on. “There’s one other group over right here, too,” he says. “Goddamn, they’re in every single place.”

Patil singles out a flock and we set down close by. After the pilot shuttles the remainder of the crew and kit over, Patil goes again up, serving to the pilot coax almost 200 slowly operating geese towards a V formation of biologists and netting arrange under. Ultimately, the birds funnel right into a small pen and the crew units to work. Zoey Chapman, a FWS biologist, wrangles squawking geese and goslings across the pen. She’s the smallest particular person on the crew, however every time she chases them right into a frantic pile, she comes up with three or 4 geese tucked beneath her arms. “Just like the rodeo,” one other biologist jokes.

For hours Chapman passes birds over the netting, dealing with downy grey goslings and combating, biting adults with a single-handed grip above their wings. Patil, Ruthrauff, and two others obtain them, recording their intercourse, age, and weight. They crimp a numbered aluminum band round every chicken’s leg, then drop the goose right into a second holding pen. Once they’ve banded each chicken, Patil opens the pen. Just a few geese scramble out, then the entire flock follows, murmuring and wing-flapping as they run towards open tundra.

For years to return these bands will assist biologists monitor this dramatically shifting inhabitants of Snow Geese, which might reside to age 30. Patil can monitor every chicken’s destiny because of a easy but highly effective system run by USGS and the Canadian Wildlife Service: Hunters report the bands on geese they harvest, and biologists submit IDs of geese they recapture throughout analysis or banding operations. These information, mixed with aerial surveys, assist wildlife companies mannequin and estimate inhabitants dimension, distribution, and demographics.

Banding received’t, nevertheless, reveal how Snow Geese have an effect on the ecosystems they inhabit. To that finish, Ruthrauff had deliberate to run a spring survey documenting the nest success of each species within the research plots. He final did this in 2018, earlier than the goose explosion, so his information from that 12 months supply a useful baseline for comparability. He’s close to sure that any chicken that requires cowl from predators has declined since Snow Geese arrived, and if he may acquire the info to point out that it could present companies with info they should take motion. Funding such analysis, nevertheless, could be as exhausting as really conducting it. After years of attempting, Ruthrauff lastly secured $70,000 to run nesting surveys in June 2024. Then a looming authorities shutdown compelled him to cancel the fieldwork.

Ruthrauff reset his sights on 2025 and joined the crew for an additional season of banding. On the finish of 4 lengthy days—our clothes goose-scratched, our hair flecked with bits of feathers—we pack up camp and fly south. In just a few weeks, legions of Snow Geese, together with greater than 1,000 sporting shiny new bracelets, will comply with.

When Chris Sybrandy hears Snow Geese arrive on his household’s dairy farm in Washington’s Skagit Valley in autumn, he feels extra anger than awe. “They’ve a spot in God’s creation,” Sybrandy says, “nevertheless it’s gotten to the purpose the place I type of hate them.”

Greater than 100,000 Snow Geese now overwinter throughout this valley, a significant agricultural middle. They’ll degree a complete discipline of winter wheat or feed grass inside hours. In the event that they descend on the 100 acres the place Sybrandy grows forage crops for his cattle, it may value him $90,000 a season. To date he’s managed to keep away from such massive losses—with appreciable effort. One latest winter, he says, “I might spend 5 nights per week on my four-wheeler chasing the Snow Geese from one discipline to a different for hours, attempting to maintain them from ruining the grass.” 

Farmers farther south face even bigger flocks. In California’s Sacramento Valley, the place round one million Snow Geese now winter, 34 growers advised College of California researchers that in 2023, geese destroyed $8 million value of alfalfa, wheat, hay, and different grasses, not counting the almost $300,000 the growers spent hazing birds and reseeding.

Such stress will persist. Inside twenty years, the Pacific Flyway’s wintering Snow Goose inhabitants has greater than tripled to an estimated 2 million. That’s virtually six instances the administration goal of 320,000 birds—a objective made even more durable to realize by the numerous forces serving to these flocks thrive. 

Some suspect that shifting land use in Western states could have inadvertently assisted geese. For instance, on the Sacramento Valley’s 500,000 acres of rice fields, farmers who as soon as burned post-harvest stubble now flood their fields as an alternative: A state legislation concentrating on air air pollution phased out burns by 2000, and conservationists added incentives to the combo. The water helps break down stubble and gives habitat for imperiled waterfowl and shorebirds, like Northern Pintails and Western Sandpipers, in a area the place improvement has diminished seasonal wetlands and drought is now the norm. However Snow Geese flock right here, too, they usually could get most of their energy from rice fields—although these growers don’t normally grouse about geese, which assist them by consuming stubble.

In contrast to with the midcontinent inhabitants, local weather change can be giving the species a lift within the Western Arctic. Ruthrauff and colleagues have documented these opportunistic birds arriving in Alaska earlier, nesting sooner, and having bigger clutches in hotter years. What’s extra, thawing permafrost is creating extra salt marshes throughout the North Slope, increasing habitat the place Snow Geese like to graze.

The Pacific Flyway can be gaining birds from an surprising supply: different flyways. Since storms and different elements minimize breeding success to close zero at locations like Karrak Lake, surviving adults have sought out new websites, Weegman says. A few of these birds, analysis suggests, now nest on Baffin Island, tons of of miles farther east, the place native researchers say colonies have been rising. Others appear to be crossing paths with western birds in migration and following them house, ending up in locations just like the Colville Delta. “These birds are little magnets to nice habitat,” Weegman says.

To get a clearer grip on the brand new goose actuality, Weegman is utilizing more and more highly effective computer systems to develop methods to evaluate these disparate shifts on a grand scale. Utilizing banding information, together with Patil’s, his crew is constructing a inhabitants mannequin for the whole continent, slightly than particular person colonies. Seeing the entire system, researchers count on, will allow them to join the dots between each area, higher perceive what’s driving completely different tendencies, and consider the place and the right way to intervene. 

Constructing these groundbreaking, comparatively low-cost fashions has change into a precedence for the flyway councils, which information joint administration by the US and Canada, says Joshua Dooley, a goose biologist within the FWS migratory bird administration division. The fashions may take a look at, as an example, whether or not boosting hunter harvest within the West, as managers have requested, would make a dent in populations. That query has been hotly debated, in no small half as a result of the variety of hunters is shrinking. In California, the place most Pacific Flyway geese winter, searching license gross sales fell 70 % between 1970 and 2020. 

The fashions may additionally assist western managers rethink a number of of the opposite interventions conceived of within the ’90s however by no means taken significantly—together with, maybe, that almost all unpalatable motion: a science-backed technique to cull geese.

If the fashions affirm that the latest increase is pushed by the birds’ newfound success within the Arctic—slightly than a greater winter buffet—and that boosting the leisure harvest received’t assist, the trail ahead could stay cloudy. Implementing any new strategy would probably be expensive and complex. Taking conservation or administration actions within the Arctic, as an example, is so costly and logistically troublesome that Weegman believes nobody would suggest it. For decision-makers to make use of any new strategy, public sentiment would additionally have to evolve. Society must prioritize learning and defending fragile, if hardly ever witnessed, Arctic habitats and, if the science requires it, to help managers in devising and finishing up troublesome measures.

For his half, Rockwell hopes {that a} extra holistic strategy will ultimately prevail. “Snow Geese are simply attempting to deal with a world that’s altering round them,” he says. He has lengthy supported searching growth as one answer, however he’s not satisfied killing extra geese is the one reply. In Manitoba’s now grubbed-out barrens, “How can we get extra grass to develop?” he muses. “I usually say, ‘It’s the ecosystem, silly.’ It’s the entire thing. Our job is to attempt to hold a agency grip on how the whole ecosystem is doing.”

This 12 months, Ruthrauff and Patil had been  poised to pursue simply that on the Colville Delta. Ruthrauff had once more secured funding to repeat his 2018 nesting surveys and was checking out the logistics of distant, weekslong fieldwork when, on his first day in workplace, President Trump ordered hiring freezes and later spending freezes that blocked the best way. Annoyed, in April Ruthrauff took a deal from the so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity to retire early, one among 1000’s of federal workers to do so. “I now sit and fear about my colleagues, like Vijay, who’re too early of their careers to do something however dangle on,” he says.

Patil returned to the delta to band geese in late July, although his future was in limbo. Earlier that month the Supreme Court docket ruled that the administration may transfer ahead with in depth federal layoffs. As Audubon went to press, Patil thought he may very well be let go, together with most USGS biologists, at any second. These layoffs, and different cuts the administration has requested Congress to make, may additionally shutter the USGS Hen Banding Lab, with out which all American banding would halt.

For Pacific Flyway Snow Geese and the managers charged with conserving them, these disruptions come at a essential time. Classes from Larger Snow Geese within the East proved that the only, least controversial measures can work in the event that they’re utilized early. Midcontinent flocks, in the meantime, confirmed that Snow Geese have the potential to adapt and surpass all human expectation, ultimately crossing a threshold past which management is way more durable. Already, some western colonies have been doubling each two to a few years. Which means even only a few years with diminished federal experience may have long-term ramifications for wildlife, individuals, habitat, and the geese themselves.

In September, not lengthy after Patil left the Colville Delta—maybe for good—thousands and thousands of Snow Geese Arctic-wide put recent flight feathers to make use of, launching their southward migration. By Thanksgiving, their spectacular flocks will alight on fields throughout the US, together with, in all probability, Sybrandy’s Washington dairy farm.

For now, he says, all he can do is chase them, forcing birds from discipline to discipline. It’s a chase that myriad human elements have compelled on this species elsewhere, pushing them from wetlands to monocultures, Karrak Lake to Baffin Island, the Central Arctic to the West. 

And simply chasing geese, Sybrandy says, doesn’t resolve any issues. It solely shifts them to somebody or someplace else. 

This story initially ran within the Fall 2025 problem. To obtain our print journal, change into a member by making a donation today.