No abstract

Protective strips do not reduce the damage to crops, and so the offer of high-protein food on these strips, which increases reproduction rates among wild boar, should be discontinued. Reduction in the level of damage can only be achieved by a radical reduction in numbers of wild boar.

No abstract

The spread of the African swine fever through wild boar population has caused major losses in the pig industry. Therefore, to decrease the population density of wild boar in Poland, the culling of these animals has been dramatically increased. However, the effect of depopulation is unknown because there are no methods that could be used throughout the country to estimate the number of wild boar. Thus, during two hunting seasons an attempt was made to estimate the number of wild boar using data from collective hunts. The forested area of 21 hunting districts (351.5 km2) was divided into five sampling inventory blocks (SIBs), which were used for the statistical analysis of the population density, the harvest rate and results of collective hunts. The average population density obtained by a driving census amounted to 8.19 ± 1.12 and 10.09 ± 1.06 (x̅ ± SE), animals/km2, which indicates that 2879 and 3547 wild boar were living in the study area in 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 seasons respectively. The number of wild boars bagged per one hunting plot was adopted as the harvest success index (HBI). In SIBs the HBI value fluctuated in the range of 0.55 to 1.87 individuals/hunting plot and the population density ranged from 6.46 to 12.18 wild boars/km2. The non-linear regression showed a positive relationship between the HBI index and the population density. The discussion covers the possibility of using collective hunts to estimate the number of wild boar in Poland and in the European Union.

In the lowland forests of south-western Poland, the effect of the fencing of forest regeneration stages, aged up to 20 years, upon the level of damage inflicted by red deer (Cervus elaphus), fallow deer (Dama dama), and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in non-fenced patches of this age class of forest was studied. In the studied forest districts (n=4), there was the highest proportion of the mixed coniferous‑deciduous forest types, where the main forest‑forming tree species were pine (Pinus sylvertris), birch (Betula sp.), oak (Quercus sp.), beech (Fagus sylvatica), and spruce (Picea abies). At the forest district level, the percentage of fenced areas in young forest plantations (1‑10‑year old) ranged, on average, from 9.1-30.9%, and that in tickets (11-20‑year old) ranged from 0.0%-10.2%. The percentage of areas of severely damaged young plantations fluctuated between 5.7 and 14.2%, and that of tickets fluctuated between 0.3-12.9%. For young plantations, a statistically significant correlation (“r” ranged from 0.51-0.75) was obtained between percentage of area in fenced plots and the level of damage caused by deer. For thickets, this correlation was obtained solely in Pieńsk Forest District (r = 0.646). In the studied forest districts, the fencing of young plantations and thickets resulted in the reduction of average potential food base for cervids, from 2.9 to 10.0 %. An attempt was made to interpret the level of deer damage on the basis of an index, taking into account the standing crop of deciduous browse and forbs, and the population density of cervids.