STANWOOD — For three decades, Vasiliy Baranyuk has studied snow geese in their breeding grounds in the Russian arctic.
It’s there, on Wrangel Island, where the white geese have their young and feed heavily for their lengthy fall migration. But Russia is only part of the story.
For the past five years, Baranyuk, a senior scientist with the All-Russian Nature Protection Research Institute, has also been studying the geese in their winter feeding grounds in the Northwest, mostly in Snohomish and Skagit counties.
“It’s very important to see all the cycles,” he said. “How the winter feeding grounds affect the summer breeding grounds and vice versa.”
Once again, Baranyuk will talk about what he’s learned about the birds during Stanwood’s Snow Goose Festival on Saturday at 1 p.m. The festival runs Feb. 28 and March 1 with a host of speakers and tours on mostly bird-related topics.
Baranyuk has spoken at the festival for the past several years about the joint Russian-U.S. study of the iconic geese.
The Stillaguamish Tribe in Arlington is supporting Baranyuk’s work in the area this year.
He said snow geese populations have been on the upswing in recent years because a major predator in Russia, the arctic fox, has been on the decline. A few years ago, wolves came to Wrangel, reducing the foxes.
With fewer foxes and with warmer weather opening the breeding grounds sooner, the geese have more goslings that survive, producing flocks of nearly 150,000 to 160,000 geese in recent years. Half winter in California, feeding in rice and corn fields. The rest come to the Fraser, Skagit, and Stillaguamish river deltas.
Baranyuk said that 20 years ago, only the young geese that stayed close to their parents were able to survive. But he said that’s no longer true. “There are more individuals who want to try something new,” he said.
The result is the goose’s diet in winter has changed dramatically in recent decades, going from mostly tuberous roots on plants in salt marshes to farm crops like rye grass and wheat, and, more recently corn and potatoes.
He believes there’s a direct link in the reduction of foxes in Wrangel and the fact that geese are ranging farther inland in Washington state to farms in Arlington, Snohomish and Monroe.
Baranyuk said his main focus this year is on where the geese go, why they select certain fields, and what they eat. He regularly drives 140 miles or so on three popular routes in a truck equipped with a GPS, a laptop computer and a spotting scope.
He said the geese are “really crazy” about corn fields and also like potato fields if the potatoes are still in the ground because they’re a high-energy food.
Baranyuk noted that many farmers aren’t excited to see the geese. He said the study team is experimenting with a falconer this month to see “how to use predators to manage snow goose populations.”
The idea, he said, is to nudge the birds from fields where they’re unwanted to areas nearby where it’s not an issue.
Baranyuk said he hopes to get back to Wrangel this summer to band some of the birds for easy identification, but he said his work there has become more difficult because the island, which used to be a small community with regular transportation, is now just a nature preserve.
“Getting a helicopter (to go in) can get very pricey,” he said.
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