Maintenance of range and connectivity Sample Clauses

Maintenance of range and connectivity. The pinkfoot is traditionally extremely faithful to a limited number of sites and regions. Nevertheless, during the last couple of decades the population has undertaken several changes in migratory routes and times and the use of staging grounds. Probable reasons for these changes are: scaring activities due to agricultural conflicts in certain regions such as Vesterålen in Northern Norway, disturbance due to hunting (Denmark in particular) and, more recently, nature restoration of important autumn staging areas which used to be farmland utilized by the pinkfeet, causing geese to leave Denmark and migrate onwards to The Netherlands. Range expansion and changes in migration schedules have probably also been caused by an increase in the population size, inter-species competition with other species such as greylag geese and barnacle geese, as well as climate change. In some cases, the changes have caused a rapid escalation in agricultural conflicts. For example intensified conflict in The Netherlands during the autumn in the 1990s was due to earlier departure from Denmark, and increasing conflict in mid Norway during the last two decades is partly due to climate change induced earlier departure from Denmark in spring. On the other hand, early spring departure to Denmark from Belgium reduces crop damage risks in Belgium. In a recent spatial prediction of the winter/spring habitat availability of pinkfeet (Xxxx et al. 2008a) it was concluded that there is still room of further distributional expansion within the known range. However, this does not take into account fragmentation of original habitat types such as wet grasslands which are turned into less favourable crop types in Flanders, wind turbines in the open landscape or effects of biotic interaction with other species of geese. These factors have to be considered in future evaluations.