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Top End magpie geese numbers under pressure, as mango and hunting seasons approach

In a blow to hunters, but a win for mango farmers, magpie geese populations in the Northern Territory are at their lowest since records began in the 1980s.

The NT Department of Environment and Natural Resources' annual aerial survey of the geese on Top End floodplains has revealed numbers of the native bird have halved since last year.

While the geese are popular hunting game for three months from October, the geese have proven to be a costly problem for mango farmers during the same period.

Daily bag limits were cut for hunters in 2015 as a result of falling populations, but it is not clear whether the Government will take similar action this year.

Flora and fauna executive director Alaric Fisher said the number of birds surveyed had dropped dramatically over several years, with consecutive poor wet seasons limiting breeding.

"The population is the lowest it's ever been with the estimate for this year about 725,000 birds, which sounds like a lot but that's only about a quarter of the number of birds that were around five or six years ago," Dr Fisher said.

"The birds are dependant on the wet season to fill the floodplains, which they nest on when the water gets to a certain height.

"It is the floodplain plants that provide the birds food throughout the year, so the wet season has a big effect on a lot of aspects of their life cycle."

Even though this year's wet season in the Top End was the third-wettest wet season on record, Dr Fisher said the impact of the preceding seasons had already negatively affected breeding.

"In 2012–2013 and then again 2015–2016 we had very bad wet seasons, so the level of nesting was very low; in fact it was the lowest on record in 2013," he said.

"There is a lag effect between how good or bad the nesting is and what the effect to the population is.

"The problem is if there is a crash it can happen quite quickly; for the population to recover is actually a more gradual process.

Horticulturalists have invested significant expense in attempts to dissuade birds from taking up residence on farms, particularly during mango harvest.

Dr Fisher said there was a need to carefully manage both hunting and pest mitigation efforts, with mango growers encouraged to adopt non-lethal management tools.

"Shooting will always potentially have a role but we have to be very careful that we keep that at a low level while we are helping the population to recover," he said.

"What we do know is the total offtake from the population each year from hunting and pest mitigation, so that's hunting by both recreational hunters and Aboriginal hunters, is about 100,000 birds a year, so it is quite significant.

"You can imagine if we had three million birds, which we had five years ago, 100,000 is a pretty small proportion of the population but, if we only have 700,000 birds, it is a substantial proportion.

"So you can read into that, that one of the ways we can help the recovery of the population is by reducing the offtake from all different sources."

The Minister for Environment and Natural Resources is expected to make an announcement regarding the water foul hunting season and bag limits in the coming weeks.