Learning from long time series of harvest and population data: Swedish lessons for European goose management

Goose management in Europe is faced by multiple challenges, as some species are declining and need of conservation actions, while other populations have become very abundant, resulting calls for increased harvest. Sweden has long-term series harvest data counts breeding autumn-staging geese. We used national (indices) greylag goose, bean goose Canada to study shifts temporal trends correlative patterns, infer possible causal links between population trends. Our provides an opportunity guide given the collected within present monitoring, well suggest improvements future collection. The geese 1979–2018, but this trend included a recent decrease latter species. Bean index decreased, whilst staging numbers varied with no clear trend. For our analysis suggests that may affect growth negatively. we could not detect any effect on autumn following year. find coherence suffice basis decisions current situation its rather unspecific goals (very abundant) (invasive species) populations. However, geese, international concerns over harvest, lack crucial information. more explicit goals, all advocate information precise. Data such hunting effort, age-structure mark–recapture estimate survival size, needed feed predictive models guiding Swedish European management.