This is the Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak’s first year surveying the species.
Daniel Smith, a biologist for the Tribe, walks a beach lined with gravel and shells, counting emperor geese. He has a spotting scope to make sure he’s counting the right birds from afar.
“What we usually do is kind of find the best access points to view, kind of a bigger area for viewing as much as we can in one location,” Smith said.
Smith said statewide, the population of emperor geese fell to about half its historic population in the 1980s, before a slight uptick in the early 2000s. That led to a complete hunting closure until the birds rebounded enough to reopen hunting in 2017.
Anecdotally, though, Smith said Kodiak’s emperor geese populations have remained abundant. The Sun’aq Tribe weekly winter surveys for the species are actually the first time the birds have been officially counted in Kodiak in about a decade.
“In our December counts, we had actually 2,300 emperors and so that’s almost double what happened about 10 years ago, when they were surveyed last,” Smith said.
The effort is paid from a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This winter is the first of up to three surveys the tribe has funding for. Smith said the project should be safe from federal funding cuts, since the grant has already been paid out.
It’s hard to know why Kodiak seems to be an outlier for the waterfowl. Women’s Bay, near the Coast Guard Base, has some of the biggest flocks along the island’s road system.
“You can tend to drive right along the shoreline and see upwards to 1000 geese here in Women’s Bay alone,” the biologist said.
Smith said volunteers have been instrumental in their surveys so far with a wide range of participants.
“We’ve been really appreciative of volunteers that have helped in this effort,” he said. “There’s some local bird watchers and other retired biologists that are helping us out in this survey.”
The research is slated to run at least through next winter, but staff are hoping to survey the birds through two more years. This year’s winter surveys will end around early April.
