57 © Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust Wildfowl (2020) 70: 57–75 The importance of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for Bar-headed Geese Anser indicus: results from GPS/GSM telemetry JUNJIAN ZHANG 1,2 , XUEQIN DENG 1,2 , YANBO XIE 3 , LAIXING LI 4 , NYAMBAYAR BATBAYAR 5 , IDERBAT DAMBA 1,6 , FANJUAN MENG 1 , LEI CAO 1,2, * & ANTHONY D. FOX 7 1 State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China. 2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. 3 Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. 4 Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’ning 810008, China. 5 Wildlife Science and Conservation Center, B-802 Union Building, Sukhbaatar District, Ulaanbaatar 14210, Mongolia. 6 Institute of Biology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulaanbaatar 13330, Mongolia. 7 Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Kalø, Grenåvej 14, DK-8410 Rønde, Denmark. *Correspondence author. Email: leicao@rcees.ac.cn Abstract The Bar-headed Goose Anser indicus is confined to central Asia, where it is currently increasing in abundance. Historically, the species has been divided into seven flyway units, of which the Eastern Flyway comprises 70% of the total world population. We used data from GPS-GSM transmitters deployed on Eastern Flyway Bar-headed Geese to differentiate between sub-populations exhibiting contrasting migration strategies and to assess the importance of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) for these sub-populations. Tracking results identified three distinctive sub-populations with differing migration patterns within the flyway. These were: 1) the Qinghai Lake–Shigatse Prefecture sub-population, short-distance migrants; 2) the Mongolia– Shigatse Prefecture sub-population, middle-distance migrants; and 3) the Mongolia– India/Bangladesh sub-population, long-distance migrants. Individuals in the short- distance sub-population remained in the QTP throughout the entire annual cycle. The middle-distance sub-population also exploited the QTP but returned north to Mongolia to breed. Geese from the long-distance sub-population departed their Mongolian breeding grounds early and spent > 80% of the total migration duration within the QTP, despite this area constituting less than half the total migration