Poster 1: Monitoring the sustainable use of game species in Flanders: game management units as an instrument.

Enacting the new hunting legislation (24/07/91) the Flemish authorities embedded the idea of wise use of game species in its regional policy. By creating the possibility for hunters to aggregate into wildlife management units (BVR 01/12/98) the authorities try to organise the use of game species on a larger (population) scale rather than based on individual hunting territories. In order to enable monitoring the use of these species and to evaluate the sustainability of the use of these natural resources, the law requires that the management units report each year their hunting statistics and the estimated population size of each of the game species. One of the missions of the Institute for Forestry and Game Management is to collect and analyse yearly these hunting statistics and population estimates of the wildlife management units in Flanders. More info? Tel: 054-43 71 44.