State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Curr Biol. 2017 May 22;27(10):R376-R377. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.04.037.
While wild goose populations wintering in North America and Europe are mostly flourishing by exploiting farmland, those in China (which seem confined to natural wetlands) are generally declining. Telemetry devices were attached to 67 wintering wild geese of five different species at three important wetlands in the Yangtze River Floodplain (YRF), China to determine habitat use. 50 individuals of three declining species were almost entirely diurnally confined to natural wetlands; 17 individuals from two species showing stable trends used wetlands 83% and 90% of the time, otherwise resorting to farmland. These results confirm earlier studies linking declines among Chinese wintering geese to natural habitat loss and degradation affecting food supply. These results also contribute to explaining the poor conservation status of Chinese wintering geese compared to the same and other goose species wintering in adjacent Korea and Japan, western Europe and North America, which feed almost entirely on agricultural land, liberating them from winter population limitation.
在中国（似乎仅限于自然湿地），冬季在北美和欧洲的农田觅食的大雁数量总体上呈上升趋势，而在中国长江流域湿地（YRF）的三个重要湿地中，数量却普遍呈下降趋势。研究人员在长江流域湿地的三个重要湿地为 5 种不同物种的 67 只越冬大雁安装了遥测设备，以确定其栖息地的利用情况。3 种数量下降的物种中，有 50 只个体几乎完全在白天被限制在自然湿地中；2 种数量稳定的物种有 17 只个体，它们 83%和 90%的时间在湿地活动，否则就会转向农田。这些结果证实了先前的研究，即中国冬季大雁数量的减少与影响食物供应的自然栖息地丧失和退化有关。这些结果也有助于解释与在韩国和日本、西欧和北美的同一和其他冬季大雁物种相比，中国冬季大雁的保护状况不佳的原因，这些国家和地区的大雁几乎完全以农业用地为食，这使它们免受冬季种群限制。
