engleski

Hunting brown bears as a key management tool in Croatia

Croatia is in the final part of the accession process to the European Union (EU). Legislation on conservation of natural resources is an important part of the negotiation process. Surprisingly, most of the current EU member states accepted the “strictly protected” status for the brown bear, including the ones sharing the largest European brown bear populations like Carpathian (Romania), Scandinavian (Sweden), and part of Dinaric-Pindos (Slovenia). Only Finland and Estonia did put exception for bear from Annex II of the Habitats Directive. The Brown Bear Management Plan for the Republic of Croatia defines bears as game and Croatia asked for exception of bear from Habitat Directive and expects to become the first EU member with bears as a regular game species. The strong arguments to support this approach are: 1) the Croatian bear population grew with continuous hunting from less than 100 to 1000 in the past 60 years, 2) bears are well accepted by local inhabitants, 3) bear hunting provides economic profit to hunters, 4) damages caused by bears are not significant, 5) management of problem bears is straightforward (with less than 2 bears removed in an average year). In the last couple years the national yearly hunting quota was set at 100 plus up to 40 bears expected to be lost due to other reasons (traffic, problem bear removals etc.). Preliminary results of population dynamics modeling also prove hunting as an effective and favorable tool for the long term conservation. The problem is that full realization of quota has become hard to achieve, mostly due to limited market. That means that the hunting management has to be adapted continually.

smeđi medvjed; gospodarenje; lov

nije evidentirano