Long-term monitoring of breeding activity of Greater Snow Geese on Bylot Island, Nunavut

Many snow goose populations, including those nesting on Bylot Island, have increased considerably in the second half of the 20th century, with some of them surpassing the carrying capacity of their habitat and imposing considerable stress on their breeding habitat. In response to perceived threats to natural ecosystems due to overabundance of snow geese, the Canadian Wildlife Service implemented a spring conservation hunt for this population in Quebec in 1999 and the US Fish & Wildlife Service followed in the USA in 2009. It is therefore important to evaluate the impact of high goose abundance on the tundra ecosystem, as well as the effects of these exceptional management actions on the demography of the population. Climate change currently affecting the Arctic should have a strong impact on the population dynamic of wildlife species. Migratory birds may be especially vulnerable to those changes because, over their annual cycle, they move across ecosystems where the speed of climate change may be very different depending of the latitude. This may lead to situation where the timing of reproduction may no longer be optimal to new conditions prevailing on the breeding grounds.