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 Greylag Goose
 Anser anser

Key facts

Conservation listings: Europe: no SPEC category (favourable conservation status in Europe, not concentrated in Europe) (BiE04)
UK: not listed (re-established population); amber (localised NW Scottish population); amber (in winter, localised and >20% of NW European Flyway population) (BoCC3)
Long-term trend: UK waterways: rapid increase
Population size: 46,000 pairs in 2004-08 (APEP13)
http://www.bto.org/birdtrends2010/images/grego01MW300w.jpg

Status summary

Apart from an indigenous population in northwest Scotland and the Western Isles, and winter visitors mainly from Iceland, the Greylag Goose is a re-established species throughout the UK. Re-established Greylags increased very rapidly, at a rate estimated at 12% per annum in southern Britain between the 1988-91 Atlas period and 1999 (Rehfisch et al. 2002). This equates across Britain to 170%, or 9.4% per annum, in the period to 2000 (Austin et al. 2007). In Scotland, the native population has grown at an annual rate of 11.7% since 1997 and the re-established birds at 9.7% per annum since 1989 (Mitchell et al. 2011). It has become impossible to distinguish native from re-established populations and they are best now treated as a single unit (Mitchell et al. 2012). The WBS sample became large enough for annual monitoring in 1992, since when further steep increase has been recorded along linear waterways with no sign yet of levelling off. Annual breeding-season monitoring in a wider range of habitats through BBS has shown similar strong increases. Winter counts of resident birds have increased rapidly since the late 1960s (Holt et al. 2012a).

WBS/WBBS waterways graph


Population changes in detail
Demographic trends