What practices can be used to restore the forest-game balance?
Discover the case studies conducted by AgroParisTech in France, Wallonia, Saarland, and Rhineland-Palatinate on hunting and wildlife balance.
In a context of climate change and biotic invasions that jeopardise European forests, ensuring their sustainability depends in particular on our ability to guarantee forest regeneration. However, this regenerative capacity is currently compromised in many forests, with overpopulations of ungulates constituting a major factor of pressure.By analysing sites where the wildlife-plant balance has been restored and is now satisfactory, and by conducting interviews with the relevant stakeholders, the report identifies the actions implemented to achieve this result. It highlights best practices that could contribute to improving the situation and makes proposals for better management of the wildlife-plant balance.
Find the full report on askafor.eu or directly on our website
Quick summary.
In the context of climate change and biotic invasions, which endanger European forests, ensuring their sustainability hinges on our ability to guarantee forest regeneration. In some forests, this regeneration is currently compromised by an overpopulation of ungulates, which constitute a factor of pressure.
In order to identify practices favourable to the re-establishment/maintenance of the forest-game balance, 15 sites were analysed through interviews with hunters and foresters. All the sites presented a satisfactory fauna-flora balance situation with regard to silvicultural objectives, and it has been sustainably re-established (following a degraded initial situation).
In the managers' opinion, the restoration of forest-game balance has been successful in their territories primarily because ungulate populations have been managed in an integrated way. In their view, and also according to various regional stakeholders, game management and forestry management must be closely linked so that hunting and forestry management take each other into account. On the sites studied, in line with the owner's wishes, clear priority is given to forestry objectives, and hunting practices are therefore regulated to achieve these.
However, it should be noted that the objectives stated here are ‘’reasonable’’: they aim to be able to naturally regenerate sufficient quantities of the present species (including the most palatable ones, such as oak and fir), as well as to be able to carry out enrichment operations while respecting basic precautions such as planting in the regrowth. It is not, for example, about trying to avoid any damage to openly planted nursery-grown, palatable species without protection.
On the contrary, the presence of animals is taken into account during planting, work, etc., in order to reduce the risk of damage.
The approaches adopted by the sites have been similar: a significant increase in harvesting through the implementation of effective practices: stalking and ambushing replacing traditional drives, but also the implementation of interval hunting and effective individual practices: combined collective and approach ambushing. These hunting practices are not only effective but are also defended as ‘ethical’ by managers as they cause less stress to animals and significantly limit the number of wounded animals. They also allow for better coexistence between hunters and other forest users, by limiting the number of hunting days and using more discreet practices. Finally, they are (particularly stalking and ambushing) very favourable to safety. They therefore meet the various challenges that hunting faces today.
The introduction of hunting «for the forest» has not been to the detriment of hunters: prices have been reduced, priority given to local hunters, facilities put in place to make hunting easier and more enjoyable, and particular attention given to conviviality. While the number of collective hunting days has fallen, the number of hunts completed in a single day has risen significantly and sustainably. This has enabled motivated hunting teams to be set up and maintained, ready to accept the manager's decisions. It should be noted that, while on the sites studied, the restoration of the forest-game balance was accompanied by a return to controlled hunting, this might not be necessary in cases where the contracting parties and the managers manage to reach an agreement: a positive example of this can be seen in Avallon, where a newly created hunting society (and hunting with a tractor-drawn gun) defends the practice of hunting for the forest, based on monitoring the fauna-flora balance via ECIs and on frequent exchanges with the manager. The results obtained by sites that have implemented the Brossier-Pallu method [7] would also be interesting to observe (not studied here as they are very recent). The introduction of new practices, developments to promote efficient hunting, practices aimed at reducing the risk of damage and the supervision of hunters all require solid knowledge and skills which, according to the players interviewed, many forest managers currently lack. More knowledge about the biology and ethology of game and about hunting practices would be essential for many foresters, but also for elected representatives, naturalists, etc. Similarly, it appears that many hunters lack knowledge about the functioning of forest ecosystems, but also about the biology of animals, their impact on the environment, effective hunting practices, and even how to set up and shoot their weapons, not least because some of this knowledge is barely covered in the training for the hunting licence examination. More training by professionals would therefore seem essential, and would enable constructive dialogue to take place. Such professionals, with their in-depth knowledge of hunting, game biology, forest ecosystems and forestry, are unfortunately rare.
Pair Pauline Duwe
Intern AgroParisTech
