Reducing human pressure on farmland could rescue China’s declining wintering geese
Abstract Background While goose populations worldwide benefit from food provided by farmland, China’s threatened wintering goose populations have failed to capitalize on farmland. It has been proposed that, due to an exceptionally intense human pressure on Chinese farmland, geese cannot exploit farm...
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crspringernat:10.1186/s40462-020-00220-y 2023-05-15T18:40:46+02:00 Reducing human pressure on farmland could rescue China’s declining wintering geese Si, Yali Wei, Jie Wu, Wenzhao Zhang, Wenyuan Hou, Lin Yu, Le Wielstra, Ben National Natural Science Foundation of China 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-020-00220-y https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s40462-020-00220-y.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40462-020-00220-y/fulltext.html en eng Springer Science and Business Media LLC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 CC-BY Movement Ecology volume 8, issue 1 ISSN 2051-3933 Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics journal-article 2020 crspringernat https://doi.org/10.1186/s40462-020-00220-y 2022-01-04T15:18:49Z Abstract Background While goose populations worldwide benefit from food provided by farmland, China’s threatened wintering goose populations have failed to capitalize on farmland. It has been proposed that, due to an exceptionally intense human pressure on Chinese farmland, geese cannot exploit farmland in their wintering sites and hence are confined to their deteriorating natural habitat. If this were true, locally decreasing this human pressure on farmland ‘refuges’ would represent a promising conservation measure. Methods We investigate habitat use of two declining migratory goose species in their core wintering (Yangtze River Floodplain) and stopover (Northeast China Plain) regions, compare the human pressure level at both regions, and adopt a mixed-effect resource selection function model to test how human pressure, food resource type (farmland or wetland/grass), distance to roosts, and their interaction terms influence the utilization of food resources for each species and region. To this aim we use satellite tracking of 28 tundra bean geese Anser serrirostris and 55 greater white-fronted geese A. albifrons , a newly produced 30 m land cover map, and the terrestrial human footprint map. Results Geese use farmland intensively at their stopover site, but hardly at their wintering site, though both regions have farmland available at a similar proportion. The human pressure on both farmland and wetland/grass is significantly lower at the stopover region compared to the wintering region. At both sites, the two goose species actively select for farmland and/or wetland/grass with a relatively low human pressure, positioned relatively close to their roosting sites. Conclusions Our findings suggest that if human pressure were to decrease in the farmlands close to the roost, China’s wintering geese could benefit from farmland. We recommend setting aside farmland near roosting sites that already experiences a relatively low human pressure as goose refuges, and adopt measures to further reduce human pressure and increase food quality and quantity, to help counter the decline of China’s wintering goose populations. Our study has important conservation implications and offers a practical measure for migratory waterfowl conservation in areas of high human-wildlife conflict. Article in Journal/Newspaper Tundra Springer Nature (via Crossref) Movement Ecology 8 1 |
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Springer Nature (via Crossref) |
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Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics |
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Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Si, Yali Wei, Jie Wu, Wenzhao Zhang, Wenyuan Hou, Lin Yu, Le Wielstra, Ben Reducing human pressure on farmland could rescue China’s declining wintering geese |
topic_facet |
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics |
description |
Abstract Background While goose populations worldwide benefit from food provided by farmland, China’s threatened wintering goose populations have failed to capitalize on farmland. It has been proposed that, due to an exceptionally intense human pressure on Chinese farmland, geese cannot exploit farmland in their wintering sites and hence are confined to their deteriorating natural habitat. If this were true, locally decreasing this human pressure on farmland ‘refuges’ would represent a promising conservation measure. Methods We investigate habitat use of two declining migratory goose species in their core wintering (Yangtze River Floodplain) and stopover (Northeast China Plain) regions, compare the human pressure level at both regions, and adopt a mixed-effect resource selection function model to test how human pressure, food resource type (farmland or wetland/grass), distance to roosts, and their interaction terms influence the utilization of food resources for each species and region. To this aim we use satellite tracking of 28 tundra bean geese Anser serrirostris and 55 greater white-fronted geese A. albifrons , a newly produced 30 m land cover map, and the terrestrial human footprint map. Results Geese use farmland intensively at their stopover site, but hardly at their wintering site, though both regions have farmland available at a similar proportion. The human pressure on both farmland and wetland/grass is significantly lower at the stopover region compared to the wintering region. At both sites, the two goose species actively select for farmland and/or wetland/grass with a relatively low human pressure, positioned relatively close to their roosting sites. Conclusions Our findings suggest that if human pressure were to decrease in the farmlands close to the roost, China’s wintering geese could benefit from farmland. We recommend setting aside farmland near roosting sites that already experiences a relatively low human pressure as goose refuges, and adopt measures to further reduce human pressure and increase food quality and quantity, to help counter the decline of China’s wintering goose populations. Our study has important conservation implications and offers a practical measure for migratory waterfowl conservation in areas of high human-wildlife conflict. |
author2 |
National Natural Science Foundation of China |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Si, Yali Wei, Jie Wu, Wenzhao Zhang, Wenyuan Hou, Lin Yu, Le Wielstra, Ben |
author_facet |
Si, Yali Wei, Jie Wu, Wenzhao Zhang, Wenyuan Hou, Lin Yu, Le Wielstra, Ben |
author_sort |
Si, Yali |
title |
Reducing human pressure on farmland could rescue China’s declining wintering geese |
title_short |
Reducing human pressure on farmland could rescue China’s declining wintering geese |
title_full |
Reducing human pressure on farmland could rescue China’s declining wintering geese |
title_fullStr |
Reducing human pressure on farmland could rescue China’s declining wintering geese |
title_full_unstemmed |
Reducing human pressure on farmland could rescue China’s declining wintering geese |
title_sort |
reducing human pressure on farmland could rescue china’s declining wintering geese |
publisher |
Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-020-00220-y https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s40462-020-00220-y.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40462-020-00220-y/fulltext.html |
genre |
Tundra |
genre_facet |
Tundra |
op_source |
Movement Ecology volume 8, issue 1 ISSN 2051-3933 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40462-020-00220-y |
container_title |
Movement Ecology |
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8 |
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1 |
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