[4] In 1750 the English naturalist George Edwards included an illustration and a description of the snow goose in the third volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds.

Edwards based his hand-coloured etching on a preserved specimen that had been brought to London from the Hudson Bay area of Canada by James Isham.

[5] When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he placed the snow goose with the ducks and geese in the genus Anas.

Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Anas caerulescens and cited Edwards' work.

[6] The snow goose is now placed in the genus Anser that was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760.

[7][8] The scientific name is from the Latin anser, "goose", and caerulescens, "bluish", derived from caeruleus, "dark blue".

[10] Two subspecies are recognised:[8][11] The greater snow goose is distinguished from the nominate form by being slightly larger.

[4] The smaller subspecies, the lesser snow goose (C. c. caerulescens), lives from central northern Canada to the Bering Straits area.

This shift may help to contribute to increased goose survival rates, leading to overgrazing on tundra breeding grounds.

[14] The snow goose is a rare vagrant to Europe, but escapes from collections have occurred, and it is an occasional feral breeder.

[citation needed] The population of greater snow geese was in decline at the beginning of the 20th century, but has now recovered to sustainable levels.

Snow geese in North America have increased to the point where the tundra breeding areas in the Arctic and the saltmarsh wintering grounds are both becoming severely degraded,[16] and this affects other species using the same habitat.

[17] Additional predators at the nest have reportedly included wolves, coyotes and all three North American bear species.

Since the late 1990s, efforts have been underway in the U.S. and Canada to reduce the North American population of lesser snow and Ross's geese to sustainable levels due to the documented destruction of tundra habitat in Hudson Bay and other nesting areas.

[20][21] The late 1990s was when the mid-continent population of snow geese was recognized as causing significant damage to the arctic and sub-arctic breeding grounds which was also causing critical damage to other varieties of waterfowl species and other wildlife that uses the arctic and sub-arctic grounds for home habitat.

The increase in population in substantial amounts raised concern to then DU chief biologist Dr. Bruce Batt who was part of a committee that put together various data and submitted it to the U.S.

The committee recommended relaxing hunting restrictions and giving hunters a better opportunity to harvest more snow geese on their way back to the breeding grounds in the spring.

The suggested restrictions were to allow the use of electronic callers, unplugged shotguns, extended shooting hours, and no bag limits.