Ep. 623 - 2024 Goose Production Gives Reasons for Optimism

Despite recent declines in some goose populations, fresh data suggest that hunters have reasons to be optimistic about the number of young birds flying south this fall. Dr. Mike Brasher is joined by goose experts Josh Dooley (US Fish and Wildlife Service) and Frank Baldwin (Canadian Wildlife Service) to discuss indices for arctic and subarctic goose populations from Alaska to Atlantic Canada. Many areas experienced early spring and good to excellent conditions for nesting, with multiple indicators suggesting better production than what was experienced a few years in the past. New data and hunter reports from the prairies support these conclusions, so good luck to goose hunters as you head afield.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Mike Brasher

DUPodcast Science Host

What is Ducks Unlimited Podcast?

Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.

Mike Brasher: Hey everybody, welcome back. I am your host on this episode, Dr. Mike Brasher, and we are reconnecting with a couple of the guys that we spoke with on a recent episode. They gave us a sort of impromptu migration update. And so those two folks are Josh Dooley of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Frank Baldwin with the Canadian Wildlife Service. I'm going to let them once again introduce themselves to our listeners a little bit more formally. We're here today to talk about the 2024 goose production outlook. I'm going to reverse the order of this, and Frank, I'm going to go with you first this time. Introduce yourself to our listeners for those that may not be familiar with you.

Frank Baldwin: All right. Thanks, Mike. So, yeah, I'm a biologist with Canadian Wildlife Service. I'm based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I work in our prairie region for aquatic unit, and my focus is running a variety of monitoring programs, including our hermit beef spanning program, which has about five sites across Nunavut.

Mike Brasher: And Josh Dooley, reintroduce yourself to our listeners as well.

Josh Dooley: Hey Mike, happy to be here. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk about geese. So my name is Josh Dooley. I'm a goose biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I'm with our Division of Migratory Bird Management. in our branch of assessment decision support. So our branch is heavily involved with providing analytical support, technical support to assess population status, to assess levels of take and harvest. So my duties involve annual updates, you know, as far as goose status, help compile our annual status report, do other various updates on goose status and With my job too, go out to all the flyway meetings, provide updates to those folks about goose status, other research projects going on with geese and heavily involved with folks with goose regulations, any updates to management plans.

Mike Brasher: Well, I appreciate it, guys. We are here to talk about geese. We spoke about the population status of geese across North America a few weeks ago when we did our waterfowl season outlook. Frank, you joined us for that, that little YouTube livestream thing. We're not going to talk a whole lot about population status in terms of the numbers that would have come out of the report this year. We may talk about that a little bit. at least in terms of how we assess those populations. We may touch a little bit briefly on some of those larger trends, but I think more importantly what we want to do is focus on some of the information that's coming out around productivity of geese, Arctic and subarctic geese from this summer. So I guess Let me think here. Josh, would you want to sort of take an initial stab? When we talk about goose colonies, maybe let's think about this. We've got hunters from all across the U.S. We've got different, all across North America, four different flyways, and we kind of have to partition out goose populations when we think about the ones that are most important for hunters in different flyways. So, maybe Josh, is it going to be better for you to kind of talk about some of the populations that we think about for the Western hunters? Will that work for you?

Josh Dooley: Yeah, that'll work. So I can provide kind of a brief update on some of the populations in Alaska and across the western Arctic. As far as goose production, yeah, we can touch on this more. You know, there's a lot of events throughout the annual life cycle, you know, that go into that productivity for that year. So we often focus a lot on Arctic spring phenology. But there's a lot that leads up to it as far as the migration during the winter and the spring, the body conditions of the birds as they're going up to breed. A lot of events that happen around hatch, you know, and then subsequent goslings, mortality events that can affect goslings, pre and post banding. So there's a lot of facets to the productivity in a given year. But I can touch a little bit just, yeah, as far as spring phenology. So that's one of the indicators, you know, we have going into the breeding season. Reports coming out of

Mike Brasher: Hey, Josh, let's define what we mean by spring phenology. I know what you're talking about, but let's make sure we get everybody on the same page.

Josh Dooley: Okay. Yeah. Spring phenology, we're really just talking about when temperatures start warming up and when snow starts melting. So a lot of these areas we're talking about are in the Arctic, so they're snow covered for a good portion of the year. So we got to have that snow melt off, you know, for birds to get up there and start breeding. So there's a very tight timing there with the snow melt and birds arriving, you know, setting up a nest. And that's another thing I like to emphasize too is that there's a very tight window in the Arctic for birds to pull off a clutch, for goslings to get big enough size to attain flight, you know, to make that southward migration. So things have to happen fast. There's a lot of very, very, very tight timing mechanisms for all those things to have a good production year.

Mike Brasher: And so when we're talking about birds, populations of geese in sort of the western half of North America, we've got a lot of different species. We got a lot of different populations. We're not going to be able to break all of those things down. But which ones did you want to, I mean, because we could talk about everything from brant to emperor geese to cackling geese, lesser snow geese, Ross. There's a lot of white fronts, obviously. How do you want to handle this?

Josh Dooley: That's a lot of information. Yeah. Let you kind of walk us through, but you know, in North America, there's seven species of geese. So we have Cackling Canada geese, Ross and Snow geese, White-fronted geese, Grand Emperor geese. And then if you count Hawaii, we got Nene too, which we probably won't touch on those too much.

Mike Brasher: Probably won't touch on those.

Josh Dooley: So within those, yeah, a bunch of different populations. We provide, you know, all updates on those populations in our status report as far as trends. There's a variety of surveys that we do for all those populations so we could get into some of the details. Or, yeah, I'll kind of have you walk through what you want to talk about.

Mike Brasher: Okay, we'll get to the species here in just a minute. I think it would be useful at this point if we sort of talk about the different data sets that we can use to assess productivity. Let's stay away from kind of population status because then that kind of gets the conversation a little more detailed. Like I said, we've talked about population status of some of these species in recent discussions. We may touch on some of it as we go through this, but for the most part, let's talk about the different data sets and methods that we use to assess production. And we're talking about how many young birds were produced this year. And productivity is sort of expressed as a ratio of young to adults. But what are the different data sets that we use to assess productivity?

Josh Dooley: Yeah, I can provide some information on that. So just like you mentioned, there's different times during the annual cycle that we're getting information that relate back to productivity. So one of the first are, you know, if there's any field studies going on where they're actually looking at breeding propensity. So that's a proportion of the birds that are actually breeding that year. That depends on both the number of birds in the population and then, you know, environmental conditions at that time, how many are actually going to try to nest. So and then other things you can assess are nest success. you know, early gosling success. So there's ways that folks, particularly like on Black Brant, they do web tagging. So these are goslings right out of the egg and they can assess early, early mortality, early survival on those goslings up to time of banding. Typically banding, you know, about 30 days or so post hatch when the goslings are a bit bigger. And that's when we get another measure of productivity. So at age ratios of banding. So we know the number of juveniles to adults. Again, that provides kind of a relative index of the production that you're at that specific site. So that's another thing we also want to stress too that, you know, we band a lot of areas in the Arctic. It's a huge effort by a ton of folks, but we're only at a limited number of sites. So again, conditions at a particular site may not apply across a whole population. And that also factors into some of these populations that have very small breeding distributions, like minima cackley geese on the White Key Delta, or epper geese on the White Key Delta. Very localized. Whereas, say, mid-continent white fronts breed from boreal, you know, and tundra areas in Alaska all the way across to Hudson Bay. So, we get kind of these snapshots of productivity at banding. So that's the next thing. And then like Frank can touch on now, Canadian Wildlife Service, they're doing some age ratio surveys in the fall. So this is after, you know, goslings have attained flight and now they're moving south. And so that probably gives us the best indication of what hunters are going to experience. So right now they're doing the age ratio surveys in Prairie Canada for the mid-continent populations. So that's what hunters can probably expect to see. They're doing them at the beginning or during the beginning of hunting season.

Mike Brasher: You know, Josh, one of the things that we're going to talk about here is different populations, different breeding colonies. And I want to direct people's attention to the Arctic Goose Joint Venture website. This is going to be an audio only episode, so we're not going to have video or graphics to go along with this. But if you go online, want to learn about where some of these sites are that we'll be talking about, you can find some information. on that Arctic Goose Joint Venture website. It's www.agjv.ca. And I think there's some cool history in here, the history of goose field camps. There's probably some maps in here. Yep. And so some of the information that you're going to be talking about comes from those from those field camps. Some are going to be where long-term studies of the breeding ecology occur. Some are going to be banding sites where there's a traditional banding operations. But I would encourage folks to go check out that website and just learn a little bit more about the things that we'll be talking about. Josh, anything to add to that? Are there other places where people could go look for more information as they are listening to this?

Josh Dooley: No, I think you really touched on it. The Arctic Goose Drive Venture website is a really great resource. Yeah, tons of information there as far as information about each goose population. We also have all the management plans posted on that website. So if you're curious about how regulations are set or harvest strategies, all those are posted there, can be found there. There's a lot of great history about all the camps in the Arctic. There's history about, uh, light geese from, you know, original, original documentation of some of the breeding colonies, you know, back in the 1920s, 1930s, all the way up through conservation order regulations and current days. So just a ton of resources there. There's also a cookbook there too, as far as snow goose recipes. Nice.

Mike Brasher: Do you have a recipe in there?

Josh Dooley: Uh, no, I don't. So that was put together in the nineties. I didn't know that. Yeah. So there's a really nice, uh, yeah. Recipe book in there.

Mike Brasher: Is it under the publications? Yup. Oh man, you need to, it needs to have its own menu. Um, you know what I mean? Up there at the top. I didn't even know that I've been to this website so many times. I gotta try to find it. It's probably buried in here somewhere. Um, snow goose cookbook. There it is.

Frank Baldwin: There it is. I think Pat Kehoe has a lot of recipes in there if you're familiar with his cooking. Oh, Mike, so yeah, there's some good ones in there.

Mike Brasher: Oh yeah. A 44 page document here. Yeah. Arctic, uh, Snow Goose Cookbook. That's not publicized widely enough. Let me just say that.

Josh Dooley: No, no, that's it. Yeah. It's a good resource. So yeah, Arctic Goose Tribe Venture website's really great. Can also look on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service page as far as status reports, all our reports, you know, we have in, we have the summary reports from the pilots, you know, they're out there. So those are posted as well. And then. Yeah, Canadian Wildlife Service, they have all their status reports too. So really great resources if you're looking for materials on geese.

Mike Brasher: All right. So Josh, I appreciate that. We're going to come back to you here in just a moment. We're going to start talking about indices of production, but first I want to give Frank an opportunity to add to anything that Josh covered there.

Frank Baldwin: Yeah, I would just say on the management plan side, they're really a great synopsis of the current state of things. So a lot of analysis, you know, if you want to look at current survival rates, harvest rates, population size, age ratios, that's all included in those management plans. So for anyone that's interested in that, it's not just, you know, the prescriptions by which the populations are are regulated, the harvest is regulated. It really lays out all the current understanding of the demography of those populations. So just wanted to add to that.

Mike Brasher: I appreciate that. I'm also looking at this and noting that there's a Ducks Unlimited article in here from 2013. I believe this is a DU article. Yes, from 2013, The Light Goose Dilemma. And we'll probably talk about this in some future episode. Things continue to change, you know, with regard to the status of light geese in North America. And so some of the information presented in that article may be, well, it's like 10 or 11 years old. And so if we were to rewrite that article now, which we plan to do in the near future, it's probably going to look a little bit different. But that's a topic for a different day. So I want to go back now and let's just start I guess up in Alaska, you know, Josh, you provided a document leading up to this, some notes collected from various people on goose production in various locations. And the first one here right off the top is Alaska. There's a number of different species that are for which Alaska is an important breeding geography. So, we don't have to go through each of these. We want to try to keep this conversation reasonably short, but what are some of the high points to take away from goose production and indices of goose production in Alaska, the YK Delta, those areas during this year?

Josh Dooley: Yeah, I would say at a very high level. So I reached out to some folks in Alaska and information, you know, we had going into the season and overall, I'd say pretty average production across goose populations in Alaska, potentially maybe a little bit above average if you're an optimist. But going into the season, kind of the first indication, as I said, was spring phenology. So based on our May survey and the pilot reports, they noted kind of varied conditions across Alaska. So in South Central Alaska, around the Copper River area, so that's a main breeding area for dusky Kanda geese, they noted really good conditions, early spring phenology. Also noted pretty early spring phenology in interior Alaska, but later spring phenology on kind of the western portions of Alaska and up into the northern areas of Alaska like the Arctic Coastal Plain. So that was kind of the set the stage going into the breeding season. Then we got some additional information from folks on the ground. So, you know, Dave Coons is leading some of the research efforts there on Black Brant. Brian Daniels, he's the refuge manager there at the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. And then Vijay Patil does some of the banding up on the North Slope. So he's, to Sheckbook, they primarily target non-breeders there, but then at Colville on the eastern side of the North Slope, they ban lesser snow geese and black bran. So the reports kind of going into banding in the nesting season were on the YK Delta, you know, pretty decent production is what kind of heard across the population. So that's minima cackling geese where they ban black bran. Some indication of high nest success for emperor geese, swans, some of the other species there. So that seemed pretty decent production in the YK Delta. On the North Slope, as I mentioned, they banned snow geese and bran. Vijay noted kind of above average production for those two species in that area of northern Alaska. And then we also get a little indication from the Western Arctic. So there's banding on Banks Island, which Frank had touched to too. So that's led by Eric Reed with Canadian Wildlife Service. But a lot of those birds, so that's Western Arctic, Western Snow Geese, that many of those do winter in California and in the Pacific Flyway. And notes there were kind of about average production or so. So across the board, seemed kind of like average production for most of those goose populations in Alaska and the Western Arctic.

Mike Brasher: Josh, I'm looking at some of the notes provided by Dave Koons regarding the indications of Black Brant productivity this year. And as you mentioned, there was indication of good nesting effort, 3.35 nests per plot. which is gonna be good. It's certainly well above a record low from a couple years ago that they talk about in these notes. 90% nest success. They're kind of attributing that to few foxes in that landscape after Typhoon Merbach in September of 22. But what he also says here, there's a low juvenile age ratio at banding and possibly related to cool rainy weather around hatch. And that gets to what you were talking about earlier, that there is such a tight window for geese to arrive, lay their clutch of eggs, incubate, hatch, and then rear those goslings to fledge, and there are different points where each step of that reproductive cycle are vulnerable. And so this is an example where it had good nesting effort, maybe an example, but the data can indicate this, good nesting effort, good nest success, but then some inclement weather come along right around the time of hatch, which may have adversely affected the survival of the goslings. Am I reading that right?

Josh Dooley: Yeah, that's correct. I think that's a good instance to highlight there. So one thing to point out is goslings, when they first hatch, have very little ability to thermoregulate. So any cold weather, rain right around hatch can be very devastating as far as survivorship for goslings. Yeah, that was maybe one thing documented there. There's other cases, too, which we could talk about in other areas. So, kind of similar, too, if we get to that, but Atlantic population came to geese this year, so they breed up on the Ungava Peninsula. They winter in areas like Maryland and the Atlantic Flyway, but kind of the same deal, shaping up to be good spring phenology going into the season. So, expecting very high juvenile age ratios, but then when the banding crews got up there, below average production is what they saw. So, Instances like that. We've seen a two Frank and I were banded together a couple of years ago, uh, Ken and the queen mod golf area. And again, shaping up to be pretty decent spring phenology, but then get up there to band and very low number of goslings around.

Mike Brasher: What, which other areas here do you want to talk about? I've got Bylot Island, Greater Snow Yeast. That's actually going to be farther to the east though. West Hudson Bay, that's a little bit farther to the east. Anything else there kind of from the western half of North America with regard to mendices of goose production. I know we're going to be talking about some of the fall surveys on the prairies, which is going to capture productivity from some of those sort of Central Arctic and maybe a few Western Arctic populations, but anything else out of that Pacific Flyway region.

Josh Dooley: No, the only thing else I heard was that they're currently conducting the fall age ratio surveys for Brant out at Isenbeck. So that's basically a congregation area for Brant across their breeding range. So again, we were reporting earlier about some of the nesting success and banding age ratios there on the Waikiki Delta, where those were the primary breeding colonies. They've been in long-term decline. for a long time, but there's also Black Brant that breed in North Alaska, and then there's Light Belly Brant that breed in Western High Arctic, Canada, and then also in Russia. So all those birds in the breeding areas kind of congregate there out towards Izembek in the fall. They do an age ratio survey. Yeah, so I was able to reach out to some folks that were currently out there doing the survey, so they're not done with it yet. It's still preliminary, but they kind of indicated looking like roughly average production overall for blackbrant this year.

Mike Brasher: Okay, so if you're a goose hunter in the Pacific flyway, there's reason to be optimistic for sort of an average number of young birds in the flocks that make it down. Is that a fair assessment?

Josh Dooley: I think so, yeah. From the reports we got so far, that kind of seems like the general education, both based on phenology and then some of these site-specific reports, you know, from the areas where we do ban.

Mike Brasher: You know, one of the other parts of this conversation, though, is for a number of these goose populations this year, there were some indications of a general decline in the in the population indices, you know, so we do want to at least acknowledge that. As I mentioned, that's a conversation for a different time because that can sort of lead into all sorts of questions about, well, why is that happening? And we don't want to wait, don't want to spend too much time on data points from one year, we can have a conversation about trajectories over the longer term. And some of these populations have been declining for a number of years, especially when we talk about some of the lesser snow geese and light geese in the Central Arctic. We've talked about that on some previous episodes related to a string of years where, you know, had very low productivity. I think that's going to be a different case this year. But so just wanted to mention, there's a couple of things going on here in the overall status of goose populations. There's where they are, there's their trajectory over recent years, and then there's productivity this year. And I think we want to kind of focus mostly here on the productivity for this year. So yeah, I guess right now, unless, is there anything to add to that, Frank or Josh?

Josh Dooley: No, I think that's good right now. Maybe move towards mid-continent or some of these other populations and we can sort of lay circle back. All right.

Mike Brasher: That sounds good. I think what we're going to do is take a break and then we'll be right back. And then Frank, we're going to come talk to you about some of the notes that you provided and some of the things that you've been hearing. So stick with us, folks. We'll be right back.

Mike Brasher: Welcome back, everyone. I'm Dr. Mike Brasher. I'm your host on this episode, and I've got joining me still, Josh Dooley with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Frank Baldwin of the Canadian Wildlife Service. And we're going to shift over to Frank and have him talk to us about some of the data and information he gathered regarding goose production sort of in the mid-continent and a little bit farther east. So Frank. Where do you want to start on this? What's the best place to go? I know eventually we want to get to some of the freshest data out there that you provided to us, and those are some of the initial results from those fall surveys on the prairies. I want to save that for the last, but right now, what are some of the other indications that you heard about for productivity this summer?

Frank Baldwin: Yeah, so yeah, we can save the conversation about the productivity surveys, you know, till later, but just to kind of draw people's attention to that survey and why it was started. So, this is our fifth year of collecting broad scale productivity data across the Canadian prairies. So, trying to capture these populations, you know, as they settle on the landscape and stage before they move on. The important things to consider are that we have other ways of getting at productivity, like we just discussed with Josh, age ratios at banning being the primary one. But there's potentially some issues with that data. So, for example, not all of our banning sites are targeting brood flocks. So, geese that are failed nesters and successful nesters, they molt at different times. So, some of our projects in some locations target non-breeding geese because we can capture a broader diversity of species. Also, we are capturing all adults in those programs. So, there's a lot of bang for buck because our management plans all use vital rate data from adults in their prescriptions. So yeah, there can be some issues with age ratio at banning. I think that data is really good at capturing busts in productivity. But when you look at the actual point estimates from each year, a lot of times it's really hard to tell whether you're in a real good year or an average year. And so it's actually during the first year of COVID really where our banning programs were shut down. where we started these surveys in a broad way. And so Ray Alasofskis had been doing similar work to this in part of Saskatchewan, really to keep track of age ratios of snow geese and Ross's geese that were coming from his long-term field site at Carrick Lake. Ray had been doing that for, I think, over 25 years and done some really neat work looking at comparisons between banding and that data and using them for a variety of other analyses. And so We wanted to sort of replicate what Ray was doing, but do it on a broad sort of population scale. And so I think it's starting to really bear fruit, this survey now, because we're in the fifth year, we've got some good years, we've got some poor years, and we're starting to be able to really use it as a good communication piece for hunters. but also, you know, potentially a really useful piece for the future modeling of these populations. So, really getting at what actual productivity on a population level is, rather than just, you know, the breeding component of the population. So, yeah, that's just, I guess, just to tell people sort of the genesis for the work.

Mike Brasher: And Frank, whenever you look at the spring conditions as they unfolded in the mid-continent, Hudson Bay, and then farther to the east, am I reading this kind of correctly, some of the other documents? I guess I'm referencing the document that Josh provided. Generally, for the most part, that spring phenology, those early conditions were good. And so by mid-summer, we were kind of expecting and hoping for good goose production out of some of those colonies. indicator standpoint before we had any of this data from the fall, am I correct in saying that we were anticipating some pretty good production?

Frank Baldwin: I think you are. I think we were, but we've also been very surprised at times where we've, as Josh mentioned, where we go north to band and, you know, what seemed like good conditions result in no productivity whatsoever. And when we talk about years of low productivity, we mean like no goslings. Like you could fly 40 hours in a helicopter and not see a gosling. And there's been years where five banding sites across Arctic Canada yielded not one juvenile goose banded. That was, I think, I can't remember what year, maybe 2018, really, you know, there was a string of little years there. So that's, you know, unprecedented, but it does happen. So just to describe to people, yeah, years of low productivity are not like ducks where low productivity means just lower, it means like no productivity.

Mike Brasher: I think that's a, I think that's a difficult concept for a lot of folks that, uh, that, uh, may not, well, it's a difficult concept for a lot of folks to, um, to comprehend. And, and so I kind of include myself in that because this idea that, that there would be no production during a given year, it's like, how can that. How can that be? But it's sort of an artifact of what we've talked about, very tight time window within which to pull off this production, and also the fact that you have a lot of these geese nesting in colonies, and so what affects one of them, kind of it's the same conditions that are affecting Um, all of them. And so those types of things are good to educate people about it. And of course, that's why we talk so much and look forward so much to indices of production for goose populations, because, you know, the younger birds are the ones that are naive and easier to hunt and more willing to decoy. And so if you're a hunter, that's a, that's an important thing.

Frank Baldwin: you know, there's a lot of movement in these colonies too, right? Colonies are growing, colonies shrink and disappear. They go from hundreds of thousands of birds to, you know, none in some areas. And so when we use age ratios at banding, we don't really know what that represents in the population. So, you know, a low age ratio or a good year in one area, And a bad year in another area might still mean a really bad year, low productivity altogether, because these colonies are growing and shrinking and changing. And the way that our batting is set up is really meant to capture birds from across the range, but not in proportion to where they're produced.

Mike Brasher: All right. Appreciate that, Frank. Let's get to this new data. When I say it's new data, the label on this document you sent me was preliminary productivity survey results as of October 8th. So this was fresh as of yesterday. I will say that I have heard anecdotal reports from hunters in the prairies so far this fall of good production, a large number of juveniles among the flocks of geese that they have seen, so I was really eager to see the preliminary results from this survey, and so I'm going to let you take it from here. We've talked to Ray in the past about how this survey is conducted. I'm not sure if you mentioned much of that earlier in this conversation, but sort of take it from here. What did we learn? What's happening with these surveys? Where are they done? And what did we learn from these different regions and different populations of geese?

Frank Baldwin: So this is CWS biologists across our prairie region that are out in the field right now, you know, folks are out today, and they're driving around in the morning and evening, finding concentrations of lesser snow geese, Ross's geese, white-fronted geese, and then also sandhill cranes. And they're using spotting spotting scopes and little tally-whackers to keep track of juveniles and adults, and scanning through the flock, recording quantities of each. And over the course of the program, we start normally about mid-September, we wrap up by about the second week of October, And yeah, more than 100,000 birds will be aged during this survey. So of course, it has to be… It's focused on those species because those are the ones that we can differentiate age from a distance. So we don't have age ratio estimates for cackling geese in this just because of the challenges assigning age to those birds at a distance, but it's pretty straightforward for these other species. And so yeah, what we're seeing, I'll just maybe start with Midcon and Whitefronts, really popular species, pretty good productivity. We think that productivity is probably a bit higher from birds that come from Central Canadian Arctic compared to Western Canada and Alaska. So we're seeing higher age ratios in Saskatchewan than we are in Alberta. But about 12% in Alberta, 22% young in the flock in Saskatchewan. And so, yeah, I'd say that's pretty similar to what we saw in 2023. So if you're a hunter, then you could pretty much expect similar numbers of young in the flight compared to 2023. but up from the years 20 to 2022. So pretty good year for white fronts. And yeah, that was borel. We actually banded quite a few white front goslings on Victoria Island this year. Really good bumper crop there, big goslings. So yeah, good year for white fronts.

Mike Brasher: Alright, well, appreciate that. Frank, where do you want to go next? Which group of birds?

Frank Baldwin: Let's talk about mid-continent snow geese, given the interest in productivity from hunters, but also their big interest of ours, too, because they've had really low age ratios for quite a few years. That was another big motivation for doing this survey was just observations of low productivity for a string of years and making sure that we had some productivity data during those COVID years. So another good year, thankfully, for that population. So good to excellent production. We're seeing 17 to about 35% young across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, so where most of those mid-continent birds filter through. We think that production on Baffin Island was fairly low, just based on observations from banders, and that's probably what's dragging down the estimate in Saskatchewan a bit. So we're seeing a lower number of young in Saskatchewan than we are in Manitoba. And that higher number in Manitoba might be sort of buoyed by northern Manitoba and northern Ontario birds. But if you're a hunter, yeah, again, you can expect pretty similar age ratios to 2023 and up from the years prior to that, 20 to 22.

Mike Brasher: Frank, I'm looking at these data here, and so you've got it broken down by province, and then with each of those province, you've got the percent juvenile for each of these groups of birds, each of these species. Saskatchewan is really important from a lesser snow goose standpoint, a Ross's goose standpoint as well. And so that was the region that actually had, I'm looking at 17% juvenile birds in Saskatchewan this year, and that's, as I mentioned, the more important, where the majority of those birds are counted. I'm looking at this here, and if you go back to 2020 and 21, We're looking at 6% and 3% or lower percent juveniles in the flock to kind of give you an idea, give you a reference point for that 17% that we're seeing this year. Last year it looks like that estimate was somewhere around 20% in Saskatchewan. up substantially, as you said, from those a few years ago, which is a good thing for people that are going to be after the snow geese that come through Saskatchewan. Estimates were good, as you said, in some of those other provinces as well. And so that's a bit of welcome news, I think, for the people that are interested in those. Ross's geese are probably going to be pretty similar, would be my guess. Is that right?

Frank Baldwin: Yeah, Ross's geese tend to have higher productivity in pretty much every given year. They're always more productive than snow geese. So, I've seen about 22% young in Ross's geese in Saskatchewan. So, it's actually down a little bit from 2023, but well up from the years prior to that. So, yeah, I know Ross's geese, our favourite target of a lot of hunters, tend to decoy really well. But yeah, pretty good year for Ross's geese also.

Mike Brasher: So overall, if you're excited about geese coming down through the mid-continent, there's reason for optimism. There's data suggesting you can be optimistic. We had good production this year, and it's sort of the second year in a row where we've had some good production, so that's a good thing. It's also a good thing if you kind of think about the trajectory of some of those mid-continent light goose populations. Those that are in tune with that issue will know there's been There's an indication that those populations have been declining, at least certain parts of it. So we've got a couple of good years of production, so that's a good thing. A good thing for a number of reasons. What else do we want to talk about here, Frank? Anything else from that mid-continent area that we need to cover?

Frank Baldwin: Just from a similar area, I'll probably just touch on Western Arctic. Those tend to move through Alberta. So good year for them also, 25% young in the population in Alberta. And so pretty similar, if it's your honor, in those Western Arctic states or in Alberta, then you could expect a year that's pretty similar to 2022 and 2023. So they've had a little bit better productivity, I think, than the mid-continent. But With all these populations, you've got to remember there's some momentum involved. It takes geese about three years to reach breeding age. So yeah, these years of good production are important, but it's going to take some time to see the effect in the growth of the population.

Mike Brasher: Well, and Josh, anything from your perspective that you'd want to add to any of that? I think we can maybe talk a little bit about the goose populations farther east here in just a moment, but from that mid-continent, anything to add based on what you've seen or heard?

Josh Dooley: No, I'd just add to Frank's last comment there. You know, a good thing to point out is, yeah, geese aren't ducks. They really do have different life histories for sure. So, you know, longevity records for some geese are 30 plus years. Like at the extreme, on average, geese might live seven years or so, or even more for some populations. So there's this trade-off, you know, with short-lived species having a lot of young versus, you know, long-lived species having very little young. So we talked about these bypass years or when conditions aren't great, like, yeah, you will have very low, low or potentially no production some year. But that's not atypical for more long-lived species like that. And then Frank touched on it too, geese have delayed breeding. So they typically don't start breeding until three or four years. So that's a good thing to point out. Like here in the Pacific Northwest, people have a good concept of salmon. For example, when there's a very, you know, low outgoing year of smolt or salmon, you can expect low returns three, four years. So it's kind of similar in geese, not quite that dramatic, but you do see low recruitment rates if you had poor production three or four years back. So it's kind of hard to keep track of these populations. You know, what happens, you know, half a decade ago can really have future effects on what those population trajectories will be. And that's quite a bit different than ducks. Yeah.

Mike Brasher: Most definitely appreciate that additional context. What about farther to the east? Greater snow geese or any of the Atlantic Canada goose populations? Do we have any information on productivity for folks that might be more affected by those populations of geese? Josh, you have anything there?

Josh Dooley: Yeah, I could offer a little information. So, got some reports from maybe starting on West Hudson there. So, Rodbrook, he's with Ontario. He does a lot of the field activities during the summer as far as banding and surveys. Jillian St. George, she's with Manitoba now, does some of the banding activities in Manitoba around Churchill now. In general reports, were conditions were looking pretty good as far as phenology, and then as far as banding, you know, southern portions of West Hudson, so around like James Bay, seemed like pretty good productivity. As they worked farther up the Hudson Bay coast, it was a little bit lower productivity. So on average, yeah, maybe expect kind of average productivity across those populations. So We're talking there about southern Hudson Bay population Canada geese. Those are the subarctic nesting Canada geese that moved down into the Mississippi flyway. And then the other reports we get are for Atlantic population Canada geese. So these birds breed on the Ungava Peninsula. So it's on the east side of Hudson Bay. They winter in the Atlantic flyway. Some of their population trajectory has kind of been showing a decrease in recent years. So, there's been some recent harvest restrictions on AP Candid Geese. There's a couple years of no surveys during COVID. Got a high survey year that next year, but since then the two surveys have been pretty low and also indicating low productivity the last couple years. So, I had mentioned earlier, but AP Candid Geese this year were one where, yes, Spring phenology was looking really good. So there we have some predictive models we actually use. So as far as snow cover on the Ngava Peninsula, so how much snow is out there in their breeding area, and then also May temperatures. So some relationships with those. So using predictive models, expected like 1.5 juveniles to adults. So if you're going to catch 100 adults, you'd expect to catch 150 juveniles. When the banding crews went out there, it was more like 0.9. So we're expecting above production. What we realized was below production, but a, but a ratio of 0.9.

Mike Brasher: I mean, that still indicates there's some production, right?

Josh Dooley: Yeah, for sure. So there was an instance with AP Canada geese in 2018, where it was like what Frank had talked about a little bit earlier, zero production, like a complete bust year. And that was a year where it was almost a 95% snow cover. So we look at June 15, snow cover is a big indicator for breeding propensity and success. And the whole peninsula pretty much had snow on it. So very, very poor year. So that's one thing with phenology I like to say is, I mean, if it's going to be super late phenology, your chances of good production are pretty low. If it's early phenology, you at least have a chance at good production. There's all these other steps that have to come along as well. And then the other population I could touch on was greater snow geese. So they predominantly breed in Violet Island, and then winter in Atlantic Flyway states, coastal states there. Indication from the folks there that do the field work, a little bit above average productivity.

Mike Brasher: All right. Well, what else do we need to cover? We've gone all across the continent, it seems like. Anything that we've missed? Josh, I'll go right back to you. Anything else that we need to cover?

Josh Dooley: No, I don't think we missed anything. We did talk about all these different measures of productivity up to the hunting season, but then one other piece we get is during the hunting season. So, age ratios of harvest. So, that's a big indicator, too, that we can then look at what was actually harvested. And in that case, you know, you have to correct for differential vulnerability. So, juveniles typically have higher harvest rates than adults, but we can correct for that with some of the banding data once we know the harvest rates. But that also gives us a good measure of, yeah, productivity that year. So taking all those things, you know, the spring phenology, then we have some on the ground, you know, field work going on at certain nesting colonies, then we get the banding age ratios, then they're doing the fall age ratios, and then we actually get the harvest age ratios. So we have a lot of pieces of information throughout the annual life cycle to kind of see where there are certain indicators of high mortality events or not.

Mike Brasher: And of course, that data from harvest is made possible because of the work of hunters, the dedication of hunters in submitting, I guess they submit tails, right? For geese to get those estimates of juvenile to adult age ratios, right?

Josh Dooley: Yeah, so in the Parks Collection Survey or the Species Composition Survey in Canada, the envelope survey, which folks might know, so that's what they submit, basically tail feathers and some wing feathers. And with that can speciate birds and then also determine age. So with the feathers looking at notching in the tail feathers, so juveniles have notched tail feathers, adults don't. You can also look for some species where it's a little trickier, like Canada geese. You look at the primaries of the wings, and you can look at narrowness versus broadness as far as trying to age juveniles versus adults.

Mike Brasher: Very interesting. Well, maybe we'll have a conversation about that sometime in the future, if we can get to it. And then, Frank, any final words from you? Any other topic that you wanted to cover?

Frank Baldwin: Yeah, I think just mid-continent cackling geese we missed on. We don't cover them in our productivity survey, but all indications were that production was fantastic in the Central Arctic, West Hudson Bay, South Hampton Island. So, most of those birds are affiliated with the Central Flyway. Most of the birds that go to the Mississippi Flyway come from Baffin Island. Productivity was not very good on Baffin Island for cacklers. So, yeah, Central Flyway hunters should expect a really good year for, you know, for cacklers, not less so in the Sippy Flyway.

Mike Brasher: And then, of course, overall, the other big group of geese that people are going to be chasing and interacting with, crossing paths with, are what we call our temperate nesting Canada geese. Those are what a lot of folks will refer to as resident Canada geese. And the, I mean, is there any way kind of big picture to capture productivity of those? I suspect there's a lot of regional variation during any given year. Do you guys have any read on like how you might might talk about that?

Josh Dooley: I'd say we generally see more consistent productivity in the temper breeding Canada geese. So they have a pretty wide time period when they actually breed. So like I'm in the Portland area here in Oregon, you might see geese starting to nest in February, go all the way through July. So they have a really wide window. Generally see that they have pretty consistent production year to year. So we see that in some ground surveys, but also in our harvest age ratios. So And then another thing yeah, I guess as far as temperate nesting can be geese maybe Well, I was kind of good to go there

Frank Baldwin: I mean, that's what I was going to say something similar just about molt migrants is our local productivity is really not that important, I don't think, for temperate nesting cavities because we get so many molt migrants. And they're vulnerable. They're really vulnerable. They're just as vulnerable as juvenile birds. Yeah, I think we've been having some weird years where we get these really early springs where birds will start nesting, but then we get a snap of cold weather, which coincides with egg laying, and those birds all lose their clutches. So we've had some really early years of really early phenology in Manitoba where our age ratio of banding and temperate geese is really low, and I think it's related to eggs freezing. It's really not something that any hunter would ever notice because so many other populations, you know, co-mingle with those birds.

Josh Dooley: That's what I was basically going to say, but it was pretty site-specific. So, have gotten reports in years past, you know, we typically, when we compile the status report, we might get, you know, reports from state biologists about localized conditions. Sometimes we'll see, or, you know, hear stories of flooding in certain areas, which may decrease productivity of Candida geese in certain areas. Or like what Frank mentioned, very late spring or cold weather, like into April, which can have decreased productivity. So a couple of years back, like in North Dakota, South Dakota, they actually saw some of that. But just like he mentioned, there's a lot of other mold migrants, other migrating canned geese, so usually not too detectable as far as overall numbers of canned geese in certain areas.

Mike Brasher: So a lot of things going on there with the local, the temperate nesting Canada geese that sort of affects productivity and vulnerability to hunting and all those different types of things. So, um, so the, I guess the main point is there's, there's a lot of those birds out there, a lot of different populations, a lot of different sources of those temperate nesting Canada geese, uh, those molt migrants coming in. I heard some reports a few weeks ago, molt migrants starting to arrive in some of those, uh, northern Midwest states. And so. All that is happening. It's the time to be out there and enjoying the resource. And I would say, overall, it's a pretty optimistic report for goose production across North America this year, certainly compared to a few years, some of the years, a couple back. So, if you're a goose hunter, get out there, chase the birds, enjoy that resource. They're a phenomenal sight. Some of the most spectacular sights that we have in the waterfowl world exist here in North America, especially when we're talking about those massive concentrations of snow geese and in some cases some phenomenal displays put on by other species as well. Josh Dooley with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for the information you provide. Most importantly, thank you for all the work that you do to ensure we're making smart decisions about this resource. Josh, it was great having you on. Really appreciate it, Mike. And Frank Baldwin with the Canadian Wildlife Service, a repeat guest here on various Ducks Unlimited sort of audio video platforms. We always appreciate you being a willing participant and the same to you. Thank you for the information. Thanks for doing some legwork. Thank you for hustling to get back from your hunt this morning to make the podcast. And thanks for your work also to help manage this resource. It's always great to have you, Frank. Yeah, thanks a lot, Mike. Enjoy it. Thanks also to our producer, Chris Isaac, for the great job he does on this. A special thank you to the person that assisted on this episode, Derek Christians. He is here back in the studio helping out with a few things and appreciate him stepping in to make sure we're able to pull this off today. We thank you, the listener, for your time. We thank you for your support, and we thank you for your commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation. Get out there and enjoy the resource. It should be a good year for geese.