REGHABReconciling gamebird hunting and biodiversity |
In most European regions, gamebird hunting is an important socio-economic activity in rural areas, involving millions of people, euros and hectares. Hunting may also be potentially beneficial to biodiversity, by promoting conservation and management of habitats within a strategy of "conservation through wise use of natural resources".
However, in some cases there may be conflicts between hunting and the conservation of biodiversity. This conflict appears when hunting is non-sustainable and intensive and, particularly, when predators are subjected to illegal killing with the purpose of maximising game numbers.
REGHAB aimed to create the first step to reach long-term, sustainable solutions to reconcile gamebird hunting and biodiversity conservation across Europe.
Review of socio-economic information suggests that much of the conflict resides in social and economic factors rather than on ecological factors.
Overall, it is clear that many management practices for hunting purposes, if they are implemented within the local ecological context and adapted to conservation priorities, are beneficial to biodiversity. In contrast the increasing trend to hunting intensification in some countries, which is associated with large-scale releases of farm-reared birds and abandonment of other management techniques, may have less benefit or even be negative to biodiversity.
The hunting sector must accept the loss of gamebirds to predators, but protectionists at the same time should recognise that predation by raptors may be a real problem in some cases, and work with the hunting sector to reduce such predation when necessary.
Current available data show that very few species of raptors create real problems to gamebirds (these include primarily goshawks and harriers in certain cases). To allow the management of predation by these species would help to reduce or eliminate indiscriminate illegal control of other species of more vulnerable status.
There are a number of management tools to reduce predation that should be primarily tested when conflicts between game use and predator conservation arise. These include, among others:
In addition to these "ecological" tools, sociological and economic tools should also be considered, such as flexible tax benefits or compensation schemes to well managed hunting lands holding endangered predators.
The implementation of potential solutions to conflicts will not work unless those solutions are acceptable to both game managers and protectionists. One way of evaluating the acceptability of the different options is to quantify perceptions of the stakeholders through techniques such as Multiple Criteria Decision Models.
The pilot application of this technique to a particular example facilitated communication between opposing groups and provided both sides with a better understanding of the perceptions of the other group.
We have identified several aspects of the conflicts where research should be promoted to achieve critical information for conflict resolution. These include, among others: economic impact of gamebird hunting on rural economies, socio-economic roots and solutions of the conflict, effect of game management on species other than game, real extension and overall impact of gamebird management on biodiversity, effect of game releases on wildlife, effect of raptor predation on game numbers in complex ecological communities.