Wildlife management is an integral part of forest management, and game animals should be considered an essential part of the forest ecosystem and agroecosystems in which the flow of energy changed ...fundamentally during the 20th century due to the use of fertilisers, pesticides, and modern technologies. An approximately four-fold increase in the production of crops brought with it an increase in the number of ungulates in the world. The tasks of foresters and hunters in wildlife management include creating the best suitable living conditions for animals and mitigating conflicts between forest animals and human activities. This necessitates the creation and implementation of modern land units called Game Management Regions (GMRs) in Poland. This concept was defined in the Polish Hunting Law primarily for managing big game populations. The aim of the GMRs is to ensure year-long management of game populations within their respective ranges. Long-term Hunting Management Plans were developed for each GMR, serving as the basis for adopting management directions, and achieving the desired state of the game population as recorded in the multi-year plan (typically spanning ten years). However, experiences and the current situation reveal several weaknesses in the functioning of these divisions, including rapid changes in the environment, particularly the emergence of barriers like highways and new buildings. This research aimed to develop a method for determining or verifying the boundaries of the GMRs based on objective criteria as a case study hosted by the Regional Directorate of State Forests in Lublin. During the conducted analysis we examined data provided by the Regional Directorate of State Forests (RDSF) in Lublin, including information on the current density of red deer (Cervus elaphus), forest cover, forest patch fragmentation, categories of hunting districts, ecological corridors, as well as existing, under-construction and planned highways and expressways. The boundaries of the GMRs were determined by aggregating hunting districts with similar characteristics using GIS software while considering ecological barriers. The analysis results indicated the need to establish 12 divisions instead of 8, with significant deviations from the previous delimitation. The obtained results underscore the necessity of verifying the boundaries of the GMRs nationwide. Keywords: large-scale game management; big game; Game Management Region; hunting plans
Monitoring faunal observations and surveys in the State Enterprise ‘Skadovsk Experimental Forestry and Hunting Enterprise’ have been carried out on both the mainland and island (Dzharylhach Island) ...parts during annual expeditions since 1991, including since 2009 in cooperation with the Dzharylhach National Nature Park. One of the goals of these studies was to improve survey methods. The last (pre-war) planned wildlife survey on Dzharylgach Island was carried out on 1 February 2022, just before the war. The island resembles a narrow sandy spit with a total area of 5.5 thousand hectares, which extends 42 km east of the mainland into the Black Sea. Its territory is covered with dense cereal and sedge grass, and much less often with shrubs (mainly olive). It is the widest island (up to 4 km) in the area of Hlyboka Bay. The current level of hunting intensity on the island, especially in recent years, is low. The main reason for this is the traditional change in the use of the land after the creation of a national park in the territory of the experimental hunting grounds in 2009. At the same time, given the importance of the economic and conservation status of the national park, it is necessary to fundamentally address the issue of increasing the productivity of the common territory by users of the provided lands, based on the long-term positive examples of the work of national parks in the vast majority of countries. The main objects of monitoring are the red deer (Cervus elaphus), the fallow deer (Dama dama) and the mouflon (Ovis gmelini). Over the 32-year period of observation, the number of deer on the island has almost halved, from 385 to 194 individuals. However, this is about 2% of the country’s deer population and 111 times higher than the average density. The situation is further complicated by the imbalanced age and sex structure of the herd. In recent years, the number of adult male deer has decreased from 32.9 to 9.9% due to unsystematic hunting in previous years and limited population regulation in recent years. The situation is similar for the island’s fallow deer population, and especially for mouflon. Thus, the search for realistic ways to regulate the quantitative and qualitative state of wild ungulates populations is the basis of faunal research on the island.
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•We examine correlates of cervid browsing damage to Scots pine production stands.•Damage is lower with the higher availability of pine and broadleaf tree forage.•Forage availability ...at both stand and landscape scales is important.•We do not find supplementary food provision to be an explanatory variable.•Creation of natural forage has co-benefits to biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Populations of large herbivores, including members of the deer family Cervidae, are expanding across and within many regions of the northern hemisphere. Because their browsing on trees can result in economic losses to forestry and strongly affect ecosystems, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how best to mitigate resultant damage. Previous research has highlighted the importance of regulating deer density and the availability of alternative forage to reduce browsing damage levels in conifer production stands. However, often only one or two proxies of forage availability have been used instead of applying a broad foodscape approach and more knowledge is needed to understand which types of alternative forage best mitigate damage. We conducted field inventories of damage that occurred during the previous fall/winter in 112 production stands in southern Sweden, while also measuring forage availability and cervid faecal pellets in the surrounding landscape (16 ha). Local landowners provided data on supplementary feeding. We found that variation in cervid (Alces alces, Capreolus capreolus, Cervus elaphus and Dama dama) browsing damage to top shoots or stems of young Scots pine trees (Pinus sylvestris, hereon pine), was better explained by the availability of alternative natural forage (using several indices and species of trees and shrubs) than by supplementary feeding. The proportion of damaged pine trees was higher in stands with a lower density of pine stems; in landscapes with a lower density of key broadleaf tree species (genera Sorbus, Salix, Populus and Quercus); and in landscapes with more open land (agricultural fields and paddocks). Damage was also higher in stands where relatively large amounts of moose faeces was found, while not related to the amount of faeces from other cervid species. The amount of supplementary feed (silage or other types such as root vegetables) did not explain variation in pine damage, but the result was possibly affected by relatively few study areas supplying sufficient data on supplementary feeding. The results from our inventory illustrate the efficacy of using naturally growing forage to mitigate browsing damage to young pine trees in managed landscapes. Creation of such forage is also recommended over supplementary feeding because of co-benefits to forest biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Summary The common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus L. 1758) is an allochtonous game species of great importance to the hunting sector in Serbia. Growing concerns over a decline in its population raise ...issues about the proper management and hunting of common pheasants. As this research tends to identify the importance of common pheasants to Serbian hunters, the present study is based on a mixed research model combining traditional analyses with social studies on Serbian hunters. The data utilized have been collected from the annual management plans of 272 hunting grounds across Serbia and the interviews with 377 hunters. The results obtained suggest that there are significant differences between the analyzed variables in the management plans examined, which indicates that the pheasant hunting management in Serbia is not harmonized. However, the social studies conducted identify the common pheasant as the most hunted and popular game species with Serbian hunters. Accordingly, the common pheasant hunting and management in Serbia has to be improved in order to meet the hunters’ expectations and ensure their satisfaction.
The myxoma virus species jump from European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) to Iberian hares (Lepus granatensis) has raised concerns. We assess the decline suffered by Iberian hare populations on the ...Iberian Peninsula and discuss the association between the effect of myxomatosis and the average abundance index, which we estimated by using hunting bags.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Designing evidence-based policies that regulate harvest levels is essential to avoid unsustainable hunting. This requires a good understanding of the relationship between bag sizes and regulatory ...mechanisms of harvest, and particularly of how these mechanisms are implemented locally and how they vary between game estates. The European Turtle-dove (Streptopelia turtur) has decreased by 30–49% since the late 1990s. The three main identified threats for the species are habitat loss, illegal killing and unsustainable legal hunting. We assessed how turtle dove estate-level harvest varies in relation to hunter density, number of hunting days, the adopted hunting method, game management intensity and the economic investment of the estate. Additionally, we assessed whether estate-level harvest had declined concomitantly with the population decline, and whether trends had been similar in relation to hunting method. We analysed Hunting Management Plans and Annual Hunting Reports of several thousand estates in central Spain, one of the main breeding and hunting areas of the species. Annual estate harvest was positively associated with hunter density, and was higher on estates that offered fixed-position hunting compared to those that only provided walked-up shooting. Importantly, these decisions are made by managers at the estate level and are not directly regulated by policy. We also found that more turtle doves are harvested on estates that invest more money in management, suggesting that the socioeconomic characteristics of the estate also influence local decisions on harvest intensity. Average annual estate-level harvest declined by 27% between 2007 and 2018, accompanied by a switch from fixed-position to walked-up hunting practices. Our study indicates that reducing hunting density or the number of fixed-position hunting days may be the most efficient ways to reduce turtle dove harvest, and that factors influencing estate-level decision-making have to be understood if reduction of hunting pressure in declining species is sought.
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•Investigating harvest regulation is essential to avoid unsustainable hunting.•Factors explaining European turtle dove estate-level harvest were investigated.•Several thousand Hunting Management Plans and Annual Hunting Reports were analysed.•Annual estate harvest depends on hunting method, and hunter and gamekeeper density.•Variables not directly regulated by policy determine estate-level harvest.
Decision-makers in wildlife policy require reliable population size estimates to justify interventions, to build acceptance and support in their decisions and, ultimately, to build trust in managing ...authorities. Traditional capture-recapture approaches present two main shortcomings, namely, the uncertainty in defining the effective sampling area, and the spatially-induced heterogeneity in encounter probabilities. These limitations are overcome using spatially explicit capture-recapture approaches (SCR). Using wolves as case study, and non-invasive DNA monitoring (faeces), we implemented a SCR with a Poisson observation model in a single survey to estimate wolf density and population size, and identify the locations of individual activity centres, in NW Iberia over 4,378 km
. During the breeding period, posterior mean wolf density was 2.55 wolves/100 km
(95%BCI = 1.87-3.51), and the posterior mean population size was 111.6 ± 18.8 wolves (95%BCI = 81.8-153.6). From simulation studies, addressing different scenarios of non-independence and spatial aggregation of individuals, we only found a slight underestimation in population size estimates, supporting the reliability of SCR for social species. The strategy used here (DNA monitoring combined with SCR) may be a cost-effective way to generate reliable population estimates for large carnivores at regional scales, especially for endangered species or populations under game management.
The Iberian hare (Lepus granatensis) is an important small game species endemic to the Iberian Peninsula for which the incidence of roadkill is unknown. We surveyed Iberian hare-vehicle accidents on ...road networks in southern Spain, focusing on roads that mainly run through favorable habitats for this species: Mediterranean landscapes with plots of arable crops, olive groves, and vineyards. We recorded roadkills over a 5-month period, estimated hare accident densities on roads, and compared these numbers to hare hunting yields in adjoining hunting estates. We also analyzed the spatial patterns of and potential factors influencing hare roadkills. We detected the existence of black spots for hare roadkills in areas with high landscape heterogeneity that also included embankments and nearby crossroads and had high traffic intensity. Hare roadkill levels ranged from 5 to 25% of the annual harvest of hares killed on neighboring hunting estates. We suggest that road collisions should be considered in Iberian hare conservation in addition to hunting, since they may represent an additive source of mortality. Game managers should address the issue of hare roadkill in harvest planning to compensate for hare accidents, adjusting hunting quotas to account for this unnatural source of mortality. Our results suggest future directions for applied research in road ecology, including further work on demographic compensation and roadkill mitigation.
•Woodland rides are important open space habitats in woodlands.•The effect of game management on ride habitat was assessed.•Rides in woods managed for game differed in structure and vegetation ...community.•Game management did not negatively affect species of conservation concern in rides.•Strategies to increase the conservation value of rides in game woods were identified.
In recent decades open areas, created by natural disturbance or human activity, have been lost from many woodlands. Consequently, species that rely on the unique abiotic conditions provided by these open areas, including species characteristic of ancient woodland, have become of conservation concern. In woodlands managed for driven pheasant shooting linear open spaces (rides) are maintained. However, previous research has shown that game management can have negative effects on woodland communities, particularly within the area of pheasant release pens. It may be that rides in game woods do not support the same species as open areas in other woods. We assessed the effect of game management on the structure and management of rides, on the ground flora and shrub communities, and on butterfly abundance of these rides. Rides in game woods were wider and more open. Although disturbance by vehicles was higher in game woods, overall habitat disturbance was higher in control woods. These differences in physical attributes, combined with the direct effects of pheasants (including soil nutrient input), explained the differences observed in the ground vegetation of rides in game woods. For example, there were more fast-growing ruderal species and less bare ground in game woods. Although the richness of shrub species was also affected by game management, the direction of the effect depended on region. Overall, game management did not have a consistently negative effect on species of conservation concern, with the abundance of butterflies and richness of ancient woodland indicator species unaffected by game management. We suggest that the effect of game management on ride communities is benign and that factors other than those directly examined in this study (such as deer browsing) also need to be considered by woodland managers.
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