Game wardens and authorities need research-based information for their work – the project developed two tools to assist them

Could protection of the wolf be advanced by regulating deer populations? To what extent can the presence of large carnivores affect the deer bag and collisions with deer? Can a more dense elk population decrease cases of a wolf killing a hunting dog?

When a big game community involves more than one prey and one predator, the combined effect of different population control measures is difficult to perceive. To make it easier, the project developed a population management modelling tool, the multi-species game.

The multi-species game is an interactive tool that illustrates the impact of different population control measures on the population dynamics of deer and large carnivores. The user can select two deer species and two large carnivore species that use one or both of the deer species for food. The tool can be used to simulate a situation where the animal populations are not hunted at all, for example. It is also possible to experiment how the populations of the remaining species would develop if one of the species would disappear completely in the area. A target density can be set for deer and a target number for large carnivores and test whether all targets can be achieved at the same time.

The multi-species game is an illustrative tool that focuses on describing the functioning of the food web formed by different species. At the same time, it makes some simplifying assumptions about the internal dynamics of each species. For example, the age and sex structure of the elk population is not described precisely enough so that the results provided by the tool could be directly applied to deer population management planning, for example.

The purpose of the multi-species game is to familiarise those who prepare hunting plans and everyone interested in the subject with phenomena entailed in multi-species population management and potential interactions that should be taken into account. The further development of the population models that the tool is based on in a more detailed direction will continue after the LIFE BorealWOLF project.