Category: Northern
Ireland
Date: 31.05.2005
Printable version
If raising a family meant travelling 3,000 miles, negotiating
your way across oceans, continents and wilderness, while navigating
using only your senses and innate intelligence, could you do it?
听
When you've conquered these obstacles, could you also
survive some of the harshest weather conditions on earth, hunters and
wild animals?
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And if you've survived all of this, you've only got
six weeks to raise your family before doing it all over again just to
get home. Every year.
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This is the real life epic migration of the Brent Goose
- the Supergoose.
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For the first time, people can follow this natural phenomenon
and tale of survival against the odds in a new groundbreaking production
involving the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) and 主播大秀 Northern Ireland
across TV, radio and online.
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The Brent Goose, a protected species in the UK, Ireland,
Iceland and Greenland, winters exclusively in Ireland before leaving
in late spring each year to make the hazardous journey to their breeding
grounds in Northeast Canada.
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In a wildlife first, 主播大秀 Northern Ireland has teamed
up with the WWT at Castle Espie on Strangford Lough, which has the biggest
concentration of Brent Geese, to follow the progress of six birds fitted
with special transmitters.
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Right now, audiences - whether they be specialist ornithologists,
schools or anyone interested in following one of nature's greatest adventures
- can log on to a special 主播大秀 Northern Ireland website at bbc.co.uk/supergoose,
or the associated WWT site wwt.org.uk/supergoose.
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While the Brent Geese use only their innate ability
to make the journey, the sites will use the latest satellite tracking
technology to pinpoint each of the six geese.
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The audience can choose a goose and follow the drama
during its journey as it unfolds. There will be two special programmes
on 主播大秀 NI television, presented by Darryl Grimason,
who will pick up the birds' journey from Iceland - where they embark
on the most perilous leg of their journey, over the Greenland Icecap
to Arctic Canada - and film with the Supergoose there.
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Regular updates on The Saturday Magazine
on 主播大秀 Radio Ulster will also keep 'Brent Buffs' up-to-date until the
Supergeese return home in the autumn.
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Kendrew Colhoun, lead scientist with the Brent Goose
Project, said: "This project will provide essential information
for the conservation and protection of this small and vulnerable population.
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"Iceland is a crucial stepping stone on the long
and arduous migration to the Canadian breeding grounds, and undoubtedly
the most difficult leg is that which lies ahead.
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"In the next week or so, some 25,000 Brent Geese
will head west, making two sea crossings and going up and over the massive
Greenland ice-cap. This is a migration of epic proportions and through
the satellite telemetry we will be able to find out how it is conducted."
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Producer John Deering, of independent production company
Yamal Productions, said: "This is truly a Supergoose taking part
in one of the most amazing journeys - and it's a great chance for people
to get involved.
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"What makes this production so unusual is that
we have no control over what happens to our six geese. In an earlier
experiment not all of the geese survived - one was found in an arctic
fox's lair, another on the kitchen table of an Inuit hunter.
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"But that's what makes this journey so captivating
and you can follow the drama of the journey from your living room. You
can 'adopt' one of the birds and each day log on to the websites and
follow its 6,000 mile quest for survival against the odds."
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The 主播大秀 and WWT websites will provide background information
on the Supergoose - along with contributions from experts - and supply
regular updates starting from Iceland, where they have been fitted with
the transmitters, until they return.
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The six geese have also been named - Resolute, 主播大秀r,
Geysir, Espie, Lagan and Myrar - the names having been suggested by
schools in Iceland and Northern Ireland.
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The final Supergoose TV programme in the autumn will
observe the birds at their breeding grounds, before charting their return
journey back to Castle Espie in what is now an annual spectacle as up
to 25,000 birds congregate at Strangford Lough.
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How many will return? Log on to the two dedicated websites
to find out more and track the epic journey of the Supergoose.
