Capacity of the forest hunting grounds on the example of the Kluczbork Forest District

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine the abundance of winter food of cervids and the capacity of the Game Breeding Centre 'Krystyna' administered by the Kluczbork Forest District (southern Poland). Research was based on the estimation of shoots available for cervids in winter time. Evaluation of annual increment of biomass was calculated on 160 circular plots, on which occurrence of trees and shrubs species was estimated (tab. 1). We assumed that the cervids cause 20% loss of growth of shoots for forest species and 90% for other species. Among the 4296 examined trees or shrubs we identified 15 deciduous and 4 coniferous species (tab. 2). The estimation of the potential food for cervids showed a significant variation depending on the species. Among the conifers, the largest total weight of shoots was observed for spruce and pine, while among the deciduous species, the largest reserves of shoots were noted for hornbeam, birch, beech and mountain ash (fig. 2). The so called secure resources amounts to approximately 8 t/1000 ha, which accounted for 35% of the total stock of shoots up to 2 m above the ground. The most food was offered by spruce and pine (over 2.5 t/1000 ha), and hornbeam, mountain ash, black cherry, birch, beech and alder buckthorn (fig. 4). Based on the calculated mass of the shoots possible to eat by deer without threat of the economic damage, we calculated capacity of the forest hunting grounds using two variants of the winter (short and long), and three variants of share the shoots in the diet. The obtained capacity amounted to on average from 120 to 144 deer/1000 ha during short winter or from 103 to 123 deer during the long winter. These results point to the urgent need to objectify the existing rules for determining allowable density of deer at the local level