As numbers of wintering geese have increased in Europe, so the degree and geographical extent of conflict with farming interests has increased as a recent review has shown (Fox et al.
2017). However, it has become increasingly apparent that despite the primary focus in the agricultural arena, issues associated with air flight safety, human and animal health, ecosystem effects and conflict with other biodiversity objectives have also been rising up the political agenda.
These multiple societal challenges require careful integration for their successful resolution, and the aim of this special issue of
Ambio is to bring together some of the most experienced professionals in their fields to review the strengths and weaknesses of existing attempts to integrate these multiple challenges in cohesive goose management programmes. In particular, effective mechanisms for integrating diverse and conflicting interests, using interdisciplinary approaches at local, regional, national and flyway scales are sought, incorporating participatory and adaptive approaches. Lefebvre et al. (
2017) and Madsen et al. (
2017) review some of the fundamentals of what causes conflict in relation to specific populations of wild geese and some of the mechanisms for deconstructing and finding solutions to such conflicts. Inevitably, there is considerable need for emphasis upon understanding the nature of the conflict between geese and agriculture. Simonsen et al. (
2017) consider scaring as a tool to alleviate crop damage by geese, but also look at how farmers perceive goose damage. They show that the degree of scaring effort invested by a farmer is not necessarily a direct function of goose use of his farm, underlining the need to better understand the sociological factors that shape perceptions in these and other such conflicts. Assessing effectiveness of regional management is undertaken specifically with respect to agriculture in Norway by Baveco et al. (
2017), complemented by a review of the success and value of key approaches to resolving conflict on the Scottish island of Islay (McKenzie and Shaw
2017). Islay experiences particular problems because of the internationally important concentrations of goose populations of conservation importance which occur on the island and contribute to the green economy there, but that nevertheless cause conflict with farmer’s incomes (McKenzie and Shaw
2017). The Islay case study is also set in the context of examining how regional management fits within the context of a national strategy and how it compares with other goose management schemes throughout Scotland (Bainbridge
2017). We also try to understand the strengths and weaknesses of national approaches that have been tried and tested in Norway (Eythórsson et al.
2017), the Netherlands (Koffijberg et al.
2017) and how effective interventions against burgeoning numbers of breeding geese are being dealt with in the Netherlands as this important issue begins to rise up the agendas of western European governments (van der Jeugd and Kwak
2017). Overabundant geese populations have been a problem recognised for a rather longer time period in North America than in Europe. For this reason, we also review how American plans for managing goose populations have progressed, delivered and developed with particular emphasis on delivering key recommendations about pitfalls to avoid as well as concentrating on highlighting the best mechanisms for delivery (e.g. Lefebvre et al.
2017). Many of the experiences associated with adaptive harvest management gained in North America have been applied to a pioneering process applied to the Svalbard-breeding population of the pink-footed goose and the knowledge gained at every step in the development of this unique European management system is presented in Madsen et al. (
2017). It is also becoming abundantly evident that changes in goose abundance are having considerable societal and ecological impacts away from commercial damage to agricultural interests, so we summarise available experiences arising from the increase in air flight safety issues related to geese associated with airports around the world (Bradbeer et al.
2017) as well as reviewing the knock-on effects of goose distribution and abundance on ecosystems and other organisms in general (Buij et al.
2017). Finally, we round off with a summary and synthesis of the entire exercise where specific recommendations are made to take the process forward (Stroud et al.
2017). There was clearly a very pressing need for such a synthesis and we are confident that we have been able to gather a unique set of experiences from practitioners around the globe from which to distill the most effective mechanisms available to form the basis for taking forward ideas about how to mount a successful integrated, multi-layered approach to goose management at a strategic level in the future.