The Greenland White-fronted Goose Anser albifrons flavirostris

1970s, all are now confined by day to agricultural
habitats (MS24).
In 1960, Major Robin Ruttledge became aware that
numbers of Greenland White-fronted Geese had
been decreasing in Ireland over at least a decade
and he issued a circular to contacts in an attempt
to determine if this was widely the case. The results
of his survey and extensive correspondence
confirmed his suspicions that numbers had declined
throughout the range and some former
haunts were deserted (Ruttledge 1973). By contrast,
at the same time, apart from the desertion
of one important Welsh site, Cors Caron (not connected
with habitat change, Fox & Stroud 1985),
rather little change was taking place amongst the
known flocks residing in Britain. Major Ruttledge
and Malcolm Ogilvie began to compile the historical
information available relating to wintering
Greenland White-fronted Geese and they
published their findings (Ruttledge & Ogilvie
1979).
The historical evidence for changes in the size of
the Greenland White-fronted Goose population
is relatively limited, since prior to the 1940s, information
is scant and anecdotal. Although the
Wildfowl Trust had pioneered the development
of count networks and research programmes into
most wintering goose populations in Britain during
the 1950s, the Greenland Whitefront, with its
remote wintering resorts and highly dispersed
nature was far less known. Hugh Boyd established
regular counts on Islay in the 1960s and
sampled the proportion of young birds in each
winter there. Malcolm Ogilvie continued this annual
count during his counts of Islay-wintering
Barnacle Geese Branta leucopsis from the Greenland
population. In the mid-1950s, Boyd (1958)
analysed the ringing/recovery data generated by
the capture programme initiated in Greenland by
Finn Salomonsen at the Zoological Museum in
Copenhagen. At Wexford, Oscar Merne established
regular counts of the Whitefronts in the late
1960s, incorporating an assessment of the proportions
of young in the flocks.
Information before these efforts was very scanty.
Berry (1939) and Baxter & Rintoul (1953) were the
first to attempt a summary of the status of the
White-fronted Goose based on available information,
but this did not enable an assessment of overall
abundance. Atkinson-Willes (1963) suggested
British wintering numbers during 1946-1961 to
be 2,500-4,500 and Ruttledge & Hall Watt (1958)
22
estimated 8,850-11,200 in Ireland during 1946-
1956. However, Ruttledge & Ogilvie (1979) reviewing
additional information available following
that time suggested totals of 4,800-5,800 in
Britain and 12,700-17,300 in Ireland in the 1950s.
They carried out the first full collation of available
information and concluded that the global
population had declined from 17,500-23,000 at
that time to 14,300-16,600 in the late 1970s, which
they attributed largely to loss of habitat (especially
loss of bogland habitats in Ireland), shooting and
disturbance. They considered that the Irish wintering
numbers had declined by 50% from the
1950s to the 1970s despite stable numbers at the
most important site Wexford Slobs. This included
the desertion of at least 29 sites and declines at a
further 33. During the same period, the British
population had actually increased overall by
c.13%, especially in Scotland, although 2 flock
extinctions of 100 (Morecambe Bay, England) and
450 (Cors Caron, Wales) and 3 flock declines were
noted. The net loss of 7,000 geese from Ireland
was not, however, balanced by the gains in Scotland
(c. 2,000 birds, Ruttledge & Ogilvie 1979).
Thorough as the survey of Ruttledge & Ogilvie
(1979) was, these authors missed a very small
number of flocks, especially in remote Scottish
sites. Hence, subsequent survey has indicated a
modest increase in the number of traditional
flocks over those that they reported.
The reasons for the extinctions and declines were
inevitably site specific, the majority of the changes
at Irish sites being ascribed to afforestation, drainage
or (in some cases) complete removal of peatlands
as a source of fuel (Ruttledge & Ogilvie 1979).
At some sites, the same authors also cited shooting
and hunting disturbance as contributory factors.
By the late 1970s, it had become clear that
there was an urgent need for information relating
to the status and distribution of the subspecies
on its wintering grounds in order to fully
determine the conservation needs of the population
(Owen 1978).
The decline of the wintering flock of Greenland
White-fronted Geese wintering on the Dyfi estuary
in central Wales attracted the attention of a
group of students who started to undertake research
and established the Greenland Whitefronted
Goose Study (GWGS) in the late 1970s.
This group set up a regular count network at all
known sites in Britain. Its further aim was to study
and obtain further information about all aspects