Game management, especially the damage caused by wildlife, triggers exceptionally strong reactions expressed by several different interest groups. Coordinating a field which triggers such contradictive interests of different public groups often requires participative approaches, which improve the possibility of the proposed measures being accepted and applied in practice, even though such an approach might not seem optimal at the first glance. In this project, we executed a consultation and three workshops with the representatives of all the focal stakeholders. As a result of these activities, we presented a consistent “action plan” for solving the issue of grazing, including the proposal for a damage compensation system, which required a crucial consensus of all the interested parties.
F.18 Transfer of new know-how to direct users (seminars, fora, conferences)
The project, together with its results, was presented several times through lectures at different scientific and professional conferences/consultations and workshops held for the interested parties. We presented the project to the Association of the agricultural land and forest owners in Kočevsko (Jerina 2015), the managers of the hunting areas in Kočevsko (Jerina 2015) and have participated at the 7th Slovenian hunters days in Gornja Radgona with a lecture »Damages on grasslands« (Firm in Jerina 2015). During the first day of the workshop, we held 8 lectures about the project findings and theoretical background to ascertain sufficient basic knowledge of the grazing issue of all the interested parties. At a scientific symposium “New challenges in agronomy” in Laško we participated with a contribution on “The economy of hay production at permanent grasslands in the presence of large herbivores” (Zagorc et al., 2017).
F.18 Transfer of new know-how to direct users (seminars, fora, conferences)
The topics covered with this project are particularly delicate and diverse in its contents and structure. The structural design of this study will likely be useful as a precedence on how to manage other damage compensation systems, e.g. management of damage compensations in forests, thus the potential applicability of this project is general and broad. A badly designed damage compensation system would cause an overflood of damage compensation applications thus increase the amount of costs, e.g. potentially could also collapse the currently established system of sustainable management of game species in Slovenia, which we successfully solved in this project by establishing an allowed damage level and multi-level system of evaluation of damages. Due to a very high variability of this research topic, we involved in the project experts from agriculture, hunting, game management, law, responsible ministries and a public-opinion expert and in collaboration with them we several times during the project evaluated the feasibility of planned measures covering different aspects of the topic. Special care was taken to define the possible solutions as responsible as possible so that they would be applied carefully and as favourable as possible for all the stakeholders. The key activities/measures proposed, for example the update of the legal act on wildlife damages, preventive measures in nature and manual for damage assessment) are expected (after reaching final agreements with the operators) to be put in practice this year.
F.01 Acquisition of new practical knowledge, information and skills