International Single Species Action Plan for the ... - AEWA

AEWA Technical Series No. 36
5. Framework for Action
5.1 Lesser White-fronted Goose Action Plan Goal, Purpose, and Results
This section identifies and defines the Goal, the Purpose, and Results of the Action Plan and
describes indicators and means of verification for monitoring its implementation and
effectiveness.
The Goal is the ultimate conservation objective to which this Action Plan contributes, namely
restoration of Lesser White-fronted Goose to a favourable conservation status. The
Purpose refers to the actual role of the Action Plan itself, namely to stop and reverse the
current population decline. The Results are the changes required for this Purpose to be
realised.
A priority has been assigned to each Result, according to the following scale:
Essential: a Result that is needed to prevent further large declines in the population that
could lead to the species’ extinction.
High: a Result that is needed to prevent a decline of more than 20% of the population
within 20 years.
Medium: a Result that is needed to prevent a decline of less than 20% of the population
within twenty years.
Low: a Result that is needed to prevent local population declines or which is likely to
have only a small impact on the population across the range.
However, owing to the strongly contrasting sizes of the subpopulations, some refinement of
these categories should be applied practice. Hence, an Action may be High for a given
subpopulation, even if the overall impact on the global population size would place it in the
‘Low’ category. In the case of the Lesser White-fronted goose, unless such considerations are
taken into account, all actions for the Fennoscandian subpopulation would automatically
become ‘Low’ priority.
Timescales are attached to each Result using the following criteria:
Immediate:
Short:
Medium:
Long:
Ongoing:
Completed:
to commence within the next year.
to commence within the next 3 years.
to commence within the next 5 years.
to commence within the next 10 years.
an action that is currently being implemented and should continue.
an action that was completed during preparation of the action plan.
The Results and Objectively Verifiable Indicators have been selected to address the
challenges set out in Chapter 3, in particular:
• to eliminate mortality of birds due to biologically unsustainable hunting pressure – in
spite of the legal protection afforded to the species across most of its range;
• to ensure that all of the key sites, including roosting and feeding sites, used by Lesser
White-fronted Geese are adequately protected and managed;
• to minimize disturbance and predation on the breeding grounds, thereby helping to
maximize productivity;
• to prevent further anthropogenically caused introgression of DNA from other goose
species into the wild population of Lesser Whitefronts;
• to fill the still-significant knowledge gaps concerning the species’ numbers and
movements.
International Single Species Action Plan for the Conservation of the Lesser White-fronted Goose 47