Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.
Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, Université Claude Bernard Lyon, Lyon, France.
PLoS One. 2019 Apr 23;14(4):e0215594. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0215594. eCollection 2019.
Landscapes composed of agricultural land mixed with forest are desirable since they provide a wide range of diversified ecosystem services, unlike specialized agricultural landscapes, but that creates a trade-off between these land uses since wildlife usually feed on crops and reduce yields. In Nordic countries, where human population density is low and game hunting can be a viable economic alternative, mixed landscape systems are particularly interesting. To evaluate the economic sustainability of such systems we need to quantify wildlife damage to crops. One important species, being popular among Swedish hunters and therefore economically valuable, is fallow deer (Dama dama). Our objective was to evaluate the economic sustainability of mixed landscape systems including cultivated fields and commercial hunting of fallow deer. We studied the effects of excluding fallow deer by using 86 exclosures and adjacent plots in winter wheat and oat fields in south-west Sweden. We analyzed yield losses and interactions between spatial and temporal grazing patterns, anthropogenic landscape features, and topological characteristics of the landscape. We found that animals avoided exposed spots, irrespective of distance from human activity. We also found a seasonal grazing pattern related to the different growing periods of winter wheat (more grazed, emerging in autumn) and spring oat (less grazed, emerging in spring). We then compared the costs of crop damage against the commercial value of fallow deer hunting. The damage amounted to 375 ±196 € ha-1 for wheat and 152 ±138 € ha-1 for oat, corresponding to a total cost per animal of 82.7 ±81.0 €, while each animal had an estimated market value of approximately 100 €. Therefore the value of fallow deer presence compensated for the associated cost of crop damage. Profit could be further improved in this case by adopting additional management strategies. In general our study confirmed the economic feasibility of this particular mixed land management.
由农田和森林混合而成的景观是理想的，因为它们提供了广泛的多样化生态系统服务，与专门的农业景观不同，但这也造成了这些土地利用之间的权衡，因为野生动物通常以作物为食并降低产量。在人口密度低且狩猎可以成为可行的经济替代方案的北欧国家，混合景观系统特别有趣。为了评估这些系统的经济可持续性，我们需要量化野生动物对作物的损害。一种重要的物种，是瑞典猎人的热门选择，因此具有经济价值，是黇鹿（Dama dama）。我们的目标是评估包括耕地和商业狩猎黇鹿在内的混合景观系统的经济可持续性。我们在瑞典西南部的冬小麦和燕麦田中使用 86 个围栏和相邻的地块来研究排除黇鹿的效果。我们分析了产量损失以及时空放牧模式、人为景观特征和景观拓扑特征之间的相互作用。我们发现，无论距离人类活动的远近，动物都会避开暴露的地方。我们还发现了一个与冬小麦（更多放牧，在秋季出现）和春燕麦（较少放牧，在春季出现）不同生长周期相关的季节性放牧模式。然后，我们将作物损害的成本与黇鹿狩猎的商业价值进行了比较。小麦的损害为 375 ±196 欧元/公顷，燕麦的损害为 152 ±138 欧元/公顷，相当于每只动物的成本为 82.7 ±81.0 欧元，而每只动物的估计市场价值约为 100 欧元。因此，黇鹿的存在价值补偿了相关的作物损害成本。在这种情况下，可以通过采用额外的管理策略来进一步提高利润。总的来说，我们的研究证实了这种特殊的混合土地管理的经济可行性。
