Optimal management of a goose flyway : migrant management at minimum cost

1. We adopt a ‘whole flyway’ approach to modelling scenarios for protecting migratory birds, aiming at efficient and cost-effective conservation of flyway habitat.

2. We developed a model to minimize flyway management costs while safeguarding a migrating bird population. The model assumes that the intensity of the birds’ use of sites can be manipulated by varying management regimes (with concomitant costs) and that the birds make optimal use of the conditions created along their flyway.

3. We used dynamic programming to find the sequence of migratory decisions that maximizes the fitness of the migrants given a range of management scenarios, followed by a management cost estimate of all these scenarios and selection of those scenarios yielding an optimal solution from both an economic and the migrants’ perspective.

4. Using the population of pink-footed geese Anser brachyrhynchus that breed in Svalbard as an example, we calculated that the cheapest management scenario given current compensation payment rates at the various goose stopover sites yielded a 35% cost saving over current management. This cheapest scenario provides a migration itinerary that is very similar to the current itinerary used by the geese. This is fortuitous since changing environmental conditions may put the migrants at risk.

5. Synthesis and application. Given the global threats to migratory birds, developing a framework for efficient and effective conservation of flyway habitat is an urgent need. Such a framework may likewise be used to assist in controlling migrants causing conflict with agriculture, such as several goose species, in an economic and responsible fashion. Our suggested exemplified framework identified large unexplainable differences in management costs between regions. Differences in management costs between staging sites for birds make big differences to the optimal management of a flyway. Hence, to achieve efficient and effective management of migratory birds, we firstly need an objective assessment of the cost of management in different locations, followed by a modelling approach as here advocated, and followed up by a collaborative action of managers along the entire flyway.

Modelling behavioural and fitness consequences of disturbance for geese along their spring flyway

1. For migratory birds the implications of environmental change may be difficult to predict because they use multiple sites during their annual cycle. Moreover, the migrants’ use of these sites may be interdependent. Along the flyway of the Svalbard pink-footed goose Anser brachyrhynchus population, Norwegian farmers use organized scaring to minimize goose use of their grasslands in spring. We assessed the consequences of this practice for regional site use of pink-footed geese along their spring migration route.

2. We used dynamic programming to find the sequence of migratory decisions that maximizes the fitness of female geese during spring migration, assuming scaring impinges on both food-intake rates and predation risk. The parameterization of the model was based on data gathered from individually marked pink-footed geese between 1991 and 2003.

3. The effect of scaring in terms of fitness and site use was most noticeable regarding food-intake rate. Scaring resulted in a redistribution of geese along the flyway. Furthermore, the outcomes of the modelling exercises were highly dependent on whether or not the geese were omniscient or naive: at moderate scaring levels naive geese were predicted to succumb.

4. On a qualitative basis there was good correspondence between the predictions from the model and the empirical evidence gathered to date.

5. Synthesis and applications. Besides highlighting the importance of learning and changing behaviour in an adaptive fashion, our modelling exercise indicated the potential vulnerability of the geese to abrupt environmental change. In addition, the exercise emphasized the interdependence of site use along the migratory flyway. The model supports the necessity for an integrated flyway management approach. In Norway, discussion is ongoing about the future management of the spring conflict between farming interests and geese. Farmers in north and mid-Norway have announced that they will expand the scaring campaign if a long-term solution, including a compensation scheme, is not forthcoming. If scaring on such a large scale is implemented abruptly, it may have severe consequences for the population: management of both the scaring intensity and its geographical extent is urgently required.

Waterfowl decline in the Mississippi Flyway [microform] : hearing before the Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation and the Environment of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, second session, on the decline of waterfowl in the Mississippi Flyway and the loss of wintering habitat in the Mississippi Flood Plain, September 22, 1988.

"Serial no. 100-91."

Health information management : What business are we in?

Developments in information technology will drive the change in records management; however, it should be the health information managers who drive the information management change. The role of health information management will be challenged to use information technology to broker a range of requests for information from a variety of users, including he alth consumers. The purposes of this paper are to conceptualise the role of health information management in the context of a technologically driven and managed health care environment, and to demonstrat e how this framework has been used to review and develop the undergraduate program in health information management at the Queensland University of Technology.