The impact of wintering geese on crop yields in Bulgarian Dobrudzha: implications for agri-environment schemes

Wintering wildfowl are widely perceived to damage agricultural crops, resulting in economic losses and conflict between farmers and conservationists. However, examinations of the nature and extent of the damage show very variable outcomes, ranging from no detectable impact to yield losses exceeding 50%; this makes it hard to infer losses in unstudied systems. In Bulgarian Dobrudzha, a large wintering goose population almost exclusively consumes winter wheat, but the impact on wheat yields is poorly understood. We used crop exclosures and dropping counts to manipulate and measure goose grazing intensity, and estimated crop yield and its components (grain mass, grains per stem, stem density). Crop yield was 13.2% lower in unfenced control plots than in exclosures in one winter during which goose grazing intensity was high but mainly occurred relatively early in the season, but there was no effect of goose exclusion in an earlier winter when goose grazing intensity was relatively low but occurred late in the season. A negative relationship between grazing intensity and crop yield was found, mainly driven by a lower stem density in heavily grazed plots. We use this relationship to infer total yield loss and calculate the economic impact for the study area to be in the order of €15,000–100,000. However, the generality of these results remains unclear because the impact of a given grazing intensity appears likely to vary according to factors such as timing of grazing, weather, stage of crop development and soil conditions. We discuss the results in light of a new agri-environment scheme that has been launched in the area with the aim of securing appropriate forage conditions for wintering geese whilst compensating farmers for losses and reducing conflict.