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Hooge (dpa / lno) - Tens of thousands of brent geese are currently meeting in the Wadden Sea. The animals interrupt their migration to the Nordic breeding areas for a week-long rest in the Wadden Sea in order to eat a pad of fat for their onward journey. Every spring around 75,000 dark-bellied brent geese (Branta bernicla bernicla) stop in the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea - 40,000 of them on the Halligen, the rest on the islands and on the mainland, as National Park Ranger Martin Kühn said. This means that almost a third of the world population of this subspecies can be seen here in spring. This is estimated at around 250,000.
In April and May, when the birds rest on the Halligen, the Brent Goose Days are usually celebrated - according to the National Park administration, the Brent geese are the only Wadden Sea birds to which a festival is dedicated. This year the events are canceled for the second time in a row due to the pandemic.
In order to still celebrate the bird a bit, handicraft sheets can be downloaded from www.ringelganstage.de and made colorful.
The finished birds can be sent to the national park administration in Tönning by May 8th.
“This is where all your brightly colored brent geese gather and combine to form a single flock.
We cannot all be there personally, but we are connected to one another in a special way, ”said the national park administration about the campaign.
In addition, a short film was made as the «defender», which can also be seen on the website www.ringelganstage.de, among other places.
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According to the information, Schleswig-Holstein's west coast is vital for the animals as a resting place: In order to cope with the strains of the up to 5000 km long flight to the breeding areas in Siberia, the goose must have fed on a fat depot when they feed between the middle and the end of May Northeast. You need around eight grams of fat for every 100 kilometers of flight. To put on 400 grams of fat, she has to eat 18 kilograms of grass, as Kühn said.
Brent geese are currently no longer acutely endangered.
But still in the middle of the 20th century the situation was very different: Among other things, intensive hunting and the death of large stocks of seagrass in the Wadden Sea led to the fact that in 1950 only 10,000 to 20,000 animals were left worldwide.
Only after the hunt for Brent geese ceased in most countries did the population recover.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210425-99-342813 / 2
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Handicraft sheet campaign
Information about the Ringelganstagen