Assessment of the naturalness of the red deer management in Central European national parks.

作者：Guenther Stephan; Heurich Marco^*

来源：Allgemeine Forst und Jagdzeitung, 2013, 184(1-2): 1-16.

• Wildlife management
• Cervus elaphus
• browsing, non-intervention, naturalness

Title of the paper: Assessment of the naturalness of the red deer management in Central European national parks.
National parks, as a category for protected areas, are a relatively recent creation. With the exception of the Swiss National Park (1914), all other European national parks were established after 1970. According to proclaimed goals, natural processes in the national parks are to be allowed to develop free of human interference. The methods by which these aims are to be achieved in respect to the management of large wild animals are a subject of much controversy: hunting traditions and forestry practices play important roles and generally accepted management standards are nonexistent. In view of these facts, we undertook this project to develop a set of criteria that can be used to assess methods for the management of red reer in regard to their approximation of natural conditions and that are suited to evaluate the quality of protected areas. Near natural areas are defined as areas in which the animals are not fed, hunting is not allowed, and populations are regulated by natural processes. In order to assess the current situation in the central European national parks, questionnaires were sent to 20 national park administrations in countries that have red deer populations. A total of 16 national parks took part in the study (table 1). Questions focused on features of the protected area, the red deer population characteristics, types of management measures, and related general conditions. Red deer management practices (table 4) in the individual protected areas were then evaluated with the aid of criteria that had been developed for determining the degree to which they emulate natural conditions (table 2). As indicated by the results, red deer are managed to a great or very great degree in most of the protected areas (figure 2). This is not in accordance with the proclaimed goals of national parks. With the exception of the Swiss National Park, red deer Populations are strongly manipulated in all of the other protected areas that participated in this study, especially in regard to population development (regulatory culling, feeding), spatial-temporal behaviour (stress due to hunting and recreational activities), and genetics (selection as an effect of hunting). In contrast, mechanisms of natural regulation, such as those caused by the presence of large predators, have only been of subordinate significance.

• 出版日期2013