While wild goose populations wintering in North America and Europe are mostly flourishing by exploiting farmland, those in China (which seem confined to natural wetlands) are generally declining. Telemetry devices were attached to 67 wintering wild geese of five different species at three important wetlands in the Yangtze River Floodplain (YRF), China to determine habitat use. 50 individuals of three declining species were almost entirely diurnally confined to natural wetlands; 17 individuals from two species showing stable trends used wetlands 83% and 90% of the time, otherwise resorting to farmland. These results confirm earlier studies linking declines among Chinese wintering geese to natural habitat loss and degradation affecting food supply. These results also contribute to explaining the poor conservation status of Chinese wintering geese compared to the same and other goose species wintering in adjacent Korea and Japan, western Europe and North America, which feed almost entirely on agricultural land, liberating them from winter population limitation.

The annual mortality for the Beijing MHD patients was lower than that for their USRDS counterparts, and this difference existed after baseline demographics were adjusted. This survival difference between the Beijing and the USRDS MHD cohorts could be attributed to differences in race or practice pattern. More studies are needed to validate our hypothesis.

No abstract