Chen canagica is restricted to the Bering Sea, breeding in Arctic and subarctic Alaska, USA and extreme north-east coastal Russia, and wintering principally along ice-free coasts of the Aleutian Islands and, in smaller numbers, in Canada and the Alaska Peninsula, with very few reaching as far south as California. Its population in Alaska declined precipitously from 139,000 in 1964 to 42,000 in 1986, but was recently estimated at c.84,500 in 2002³.