A GRANT of £24,000 has been awarded to help improve the conservation of the declining population of Greenland white-fronted geese on the Dyfi Estuary.

The money has come from RSPB Cymru, acting on behalf of the Welsh Greenland White-Fronted geese Partnership, with the help of Natural Resources Wales and is on top of £15,000 in Welsh Government funding already made available to the Partnership last year.

The project aims to monitor the movements of the geese, identify the locations of their autumn and Winter stop-over sites in Wales and determine their habitat selection on the Dyfi Estuary and the Dyfi Estuary Special Protection Areas.

The Partnership hopes this project will offer a breakthrough in setting action priorities to help save this threatened population.

The current global population of the Greenland white-fronted geese is estimated to be 18,879, which is similar to the estimate of 18,854 in spring 2015, the lowest recorded since spring 1985 and a marked decline on the previous estimate of 20,797 in spring 2014.

2015 was also the first year since 1985 that the global population had fallen below 20,000 birds.

The partnership, which consists of Welsh Government, The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, RSPB Cymru, ecologist Mick Green, Natural Resources Wales, The British Association for Shooting and Conservation and the Dyfi, Mawddach and Dysynni Wildfowlers’ Association hope the new Welsh Government funding will help answer crucial questions about eh geese.

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