Stödutfodring av klövvilt i södra Sverige : en jämförelse av utfodringsintensitet, fodertyper och andra påverkande faktorer på lokal och regional nivå

Abstract: Forestry in Sweden suffer major financial losses due to browsing damages in young forest. Investigation of factors that might affect the injury rate is therefore of great interest to find tools to reduce these damages. The idea to investigate the relationship between supplementary feeding and browsing damage arose when studies showed that moose who eat a diet with unbalanced nutritional composition compensate this by eating a larger amount twigs. Several types of feed used for supplementary feeding today contain large amounts of sugar (eg sugar beet and carrots). It is therefore possible that the wild game in the forest makes up for this by browsing in the nearby forest. The main goal of this study is to provide information to the gap of knowledge that today exists for supplementary feeding in Sweden. This study examines how hunters and landowners managed supplementary feeding on their hunting grounds during the hunting season 2014/2015 and the factors that affect the choice of feeding or not. Investigations of how supplementary feeding and land use in the landscape affect the browsing damages was also made. Information about supplementary feeding was collected through telephone interviews with landowners and hunters, while we got data for browsing damages and land types from the Swedish Forest Agency and the Swedish Land Survey. The results of the study show that supplementary feeding intensity differs between different areas in southern Sweden, but the difference is even greater between specific respondents. The study indicates that the proportion of agricultural land in the neighborhood have an impact on the amount of supplementary feeding in the area. Furthermore, the results show that the proportion of young forests in the landscape is a factor that affects damage rates, and that there are indications that an increased amount of sugar available through supplementary feeding leads to an increased amount of browsing damages. One conclusion from the study is that to conduct telephone interviews is a good method to obtain information on supplementary feeding. The study results also show that further research of how the feed nutritional composition and proportion of young forests in the landscape influence the level of damage on pine are of great importance and interest to the forest industry in the question of how we can reduce browsing damages.