Vetmeduni: VetDoc

Wild ungulates have deep impacts on socio-ecological systems, and analyzing large-scale population trends in a multispecies set can identify their environmental and socio-economic drivers. We collected annual hunting bags (n = 11,046, period 1975–2018) of European roe deer, red deer, wild boar, fallow deer, mouflon, northern chamois and moose, across Europe. We identified different temporal trends in their hunting bags and evaluated the social and environmental drivers of their relative abundances. The number of harvested red deer and fallow deer, increased steadily across Europe, with minor differences among countries, despite variations in land use and climate. On the contrary, European roe deer harvests have decreased in six European countries since the late 1990s, probably due to landscape changes and locally also due to predation, interspecific competition, and/or increasing temperatures. Northern chamois harvests in Austria and Switzerland have decreased markedly, probably due to increasing temperatures, which decrease the survival of kids at high altitudes. Wild boar harvests have decreased in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania since the African Swine Fever outbreak in 2013–2014. Minor differences emerged between countries adopting different management regimes for wild ungulates. While many studies pointed out landscape changes as the cornerstone for the increase in wild ungulates across Europe, our research emphasizes important species-specific differences. There is a need to predict how landscape dynamics, climate change and recovering large carnivores will affect populations of species already showing signs of decline, like the European roe deer or the northern chamois.

Latvian State Forest Res Inst Silava

University of Aveiro

University of Ioannina

Institute of Animal Science

Macedonian Ecological Society

Universidad de Córdoba

University of Oslo

Estonian University of Life Sciences

Università degli Studi di Sassari

Universität Belgrad

University of Zagreb

Carpathian Wildlife Society