OO. 4g.1 Promote integrated management of hunting grounds in cooperation with farmers, foresters and environmental NGO’s and application of good hunting practices

Game habitats should be managed in an integrated manner fully compatible with maintenance and rehabilitation of biodiversity (Objective 3) and in cooperation with farmers, foresters, other users of the countryside and environmental NGO's. For instance, attention should be paid to create and maintain refuge areas for small game, in particular in agricultural habitats. Hunters should participate to semi-natural habitats restoration and small landscape elements conservation in open lands taking into account that today farmers and land owners are the key role players for landscape management. To achieve this goal, legislative initiatives, such as modification of set-aside regulation, should be taken by the competent governments.

On the long term, game management units should be stimulated and plans should be extended to all native game species in all Regions.

Hunters should be aware of the carrying capacity of habitats. Total achievement of annual big game cull plans and game management plans will help restore the equilibrium between economical, ecological and social functions of forest and countryside. High densities of ungulates are locally a problem for foresters that can be managed in partnership with hunters. Populations of big game have increased over the last 20 years due to a lack of severe winter periods for several years, the positive effect of storms on forests' nutritional potential (CEEW, 2000), but also due to the absence of natural predators since more than 150 years and hunters' tendency to protect females of big game and the feeding of wild boar (CEEW, 2005). This phenomenon has led to an over-density of total population of wild boar, roe deer and red deer in Wallonia (a similar evolution is observed in neighbouring regions) which locally cause damages to trees, hamper forest regeneration, threat several species and sensitive habitats, and cause other problems, including in suburban zones.

It is important to develop legal instruments in order to enable taking concrete measures for field management on favour of biodiversity. Several field measures still miss a legal framework or lack financial incentives (for instance, wildlife set-aside measures).

Some current legislation even has adverse effects on biodiversity (a.o. in Flanders, the berm Decree still allows mowing before 15 July and this hampers the breeding success of partridge and other species; in Wallonia, farmers are obliged to cut some set-aside covers in May-July during the main period of wildlife reproduction).