Any Estonian members on here?

[Reloader708]

Hello, this is a shout out to any Estonian members on the site.
I'm heading over at some point in February and would like to meet up with someone involved in forestry and/or wildlife management who would be happy to give me an insite into some of the difference between our own (scotish) forestry/deer management and Estonian practices.
I'm a ranger for a large forestry company in Scotland and would be happy to return the favour if you're interested.
Not looking for shooting, I've enough of that, it's purely educational.

Kind regards.

 

[Reloader708]

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[EMcC]

There's lots of British troops over there at the moment on exercise

 

[Reloader708]

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[jthyttin]

I'll try to find somebody, but don't hold your breath. I'm from Finland but visit Estonia regularly.

In the meantime I can give you quick explanation on the bureaucratic side of wildlife management in Estonia. The land is divided into "hunting counties" (direct translation, in Estonian it's jahipiirkond) and government will give them to applicants for certain time (like 5y) to administer. Few counties are administered by government (at least RMK, the local Forestry Commission), in most it's a mix of government and private land. Most usual county holders are local hunting clubs.

For landowner, you have to specifically deny hunting on your land if you so wish. Otherwise it's used by the county holder, but 200m around points of residence are off limits unless specifically allowed by the resident. Theoretically hunters have obligation to reimburse wildlife damage to crops and forests, unless they can show to have taken reasonable measures to mitigate damage (also landowner has responsibilities). If you deny hunting, naturally this removes the possibility for reimbursement, how theoretical it might be.

If there are several applicants for a given county, it will be given to applicant that has most written contracts with landowners. Or actually the most hectares but you get the point.

Each year every county is assigned the minimum number of game to be shot. This will be mostly based on reported game numbers in the county (county holder will do the yearly report). Some game (large predators) have regional quotas, and they are maximum not minimum.

A hunter needs to have gone through hunter education (quite comprehensive) and pay yearly for the right to hunt (10 Euro). In order to shoot certain animals (roe and up) hunter needs to take shooting test every 2 years. There are two tests, one for static target and one for static/moving target (actually the static/moving test is split in two, one for rifle and one for shotgun). If you take the test only for static target, you cannot participate as shooter in driven events.

Firearm licenses are somewhat same as in UK, they're valid for 5 years, you can have firearm for certain activities (protection, hunting, sporting) and while licenses do not state quotas for ammunition, it's in the legislation (300rds per hunting firearm and 1000 per sporting firearm or something like that).

 

[Reloader708]

I'll try to find somebody, but don't hold your breath. I'm from Finland but visit Estonia regularly.

In the meantime I can give you quick explanation on the bureaucratic side of wildlife management in Estonia. The land is divided into "hunting counties" (direct translation, in Estonian it's jahipiirkond) and government will give them to applicants for certain time (like 5y) to administer. Few counties are administered by government (at least RMK, the local Forestry Commission), in most it's a mix of government and private land. Most usual county holders are local hunting clubs.

For landowner, you have to specifically deny hunting on your land if you so wish. Otherwise it's used by the county holder, but 200m around points of residence are off limits unless specifically allowed by the resident. Theoretically hunters have obligation to reimburse wildlife damage to crops and forests, unless they can show to have taken reasonable measures to mitigate damage (also landowner has responsibilities). If you deny hunting, naturally this removes the possibility for reimbursement, how theoretical it might be.

If there are several applicants for a given county, it will be given to applicant that has most written contracts with landowners. Or actually the most hectares but you get the point.

Each year every county is assigned the minimum number of game to be shot. This will be mostly based on reported game numbers in the county (county holder will do the yearly report). Some game (large predators) have regional quotas, and they are maximum not minimum.

A hunter needs to have gone through hunter education (quite comprehensive) and pay yearly for the right to hunt (10 Euro). In order to shoot certain animals (roe and up) hunter needs to take shooting test every 2 years. There are two tests, one for static target and one for static/moving target (actually the static/moving test is split in two, one for rifle and one for shotgun). If you take the test only for static target, you cannot participate as shooter in driven events.

Firearm licenses are somewhat same as in UK, they're valid for 5 years, you can have firearm for certain activities (protection, hunting, sporting) and while licenses do not state quotas for ammunition, it's in the legislation (300rds per hunting firearm and 1000 per sporting firearm or something like that).

Thank you for taking the time to explain this, I might have to read it a few more times to properly get my head around it. It does sound quite bureaucratic.
I was also interested to see the effect large predators had on deer numbers, particularly the roe and lynx relationship as there is increasing momentum to trial this approach in South west Scotland.
Look forward to (possibly) hearing from your connections.
Regards.

 

[deerstalker.308]

Thank you for taking the time to explain this, I might have to read it a few more times to properly get my head around it. It does sound quite bureaucratic.
I was also interested to see the effect large predators had on deer numbers, particularly the roe and lynx relationship as there is increasing momentum to trial this approach in South west Scotland.
Look forward to (possibly) hearing from your connections.
Regards.

If you do get anywhere with this please do share anything that comes out of it, I’m in a similar situation to you but in England, those conversations aren’t going away nationally, so it would be interesting to get others experiences

 

[jthyttin]

I was also interested to see the effect large predators had on deer numbers, particularly the roe and lynx relationship as there is increasing momentum to trial this approach in South west Scotland.

There should be some white papers from Finland and Sweden. I try to look around. I managed to find some slides that were referring to Swedish research that adult lynx will kill 35-50 roe per year and female with cubs about 70. But there was no formal reference to the actual source.

 

[Reloader708]

There should be some white papers from Finland and Sweden. I try to look around. I managed to find some slides that were referring to Swedish research that adult lynx will kill 35-50 roe per year and female with cubs about 70. But there was no formal reference to the actual source.

I wouldn't mind a look at what you get up to in Finland too. It's good to hear different approaches and attitudes to how we manage our natural resources particularly deer.
Deer in Scotland seem to have been reduced in status to that of vermin with the government reluctant to view them as an asset.
I'm particularly interested to hear of the interactions between forestry production an deer management and if the two enjoy a more harmonic relationship.
And, likewise I'm happy to return the offer and show you how we facilitate or wildlife management practices here in return.

 

[biffo]

Ah misread it, thought you’d asked if any Old Etonians on the site

 

[KimE]

For Lynx in Sweden and Norway. Lodjur, Gaupe
Only abstracts are in english but google translate might work.

Population research

Viltskadecenter | slu.se

Viltskadecenter (VSC) är ett nationellt centrum för kunskap om vilt, viltskador och samhälle. Vi forskar, utvecklar, utbildar och informerar. Vårt mål är att begränsa skador och konflikter som orsakas av fredade viltarter, framför allt stora rovdjur och betande fåglar. Vi samverkar med flera...

www.slu.se

Damage to domestic animals

https://www.de5stora.com/media/1824140/viltskadestatistik-2021.pdf

 

[KimE]

I wouldn't mind a look at what you get up to in Finland too. It's good to hear different approaches and attitudes to how we manage our natural resources particularly deer.
Deer in Scotland seem to have been reduced in status to that of vermin with the government reluctant to view them as an asset.
I'm particularly interested to hear of the interactions between forestry production an deer management and if the two enjoy a more harmonic relationship.
And, likewise I'm happy to return the offer and show you how we facilitate or wildlife management practices here in return.

The damage of deer mainly reddeer are in some areas in southern Sweden in the rest of Sweden its moose who do the main part of damage. Moose makes fresh yearly damage to between 5-20% of young pine trees (1-4m height). Its not so harmonic relationship between hunters and forrest companys, moose hunters wants to have enough moose to enjoy the hunting made mostly by barking bailing dogs and the forest company wants both less damage of the forest and an income payed by the lease of hunting areas.

 

[Reloader708]

The damage of deer mainly reddeer are in some areas in southern Sweden in the rest of Sweden its moose who do the main part of damage. Moose makes fresh yearly damage to between 5-20% of young pine trees (1-4m height). Its not so harmonic relationship between hunters and forrest companys, moose hunters wants to have enough moose to enjoy the hunting made mostly by barking bailing dogs and the forest company wants both less damage of the forest and an income payed by the lease of hunting areas.

5-20% is very high, we operate on a maximum of 5% anything higher and I get called to a difficult meeting. Very interesting to see there is tension between the sporting interesting and forestry.
We're I'm a position where leasing deer stalking in not financially viable, recreation stalkers simply cannot keep the damage at a low enough rate to justify the lease, basically the trees are worth more than the stalking lease.
There's some stupid tax incentives around deer leases too that make things even more complicated.

 

[jthyttin]

Also in Finland moose is the main concern regarding forestry damage. Some people have different claims but for the most part no facts to back them up.

In addition to moose we have only roe and whitetail in any substantial numbers. Roe are nuisance around dwellings, and to some special crops like strawberry farms. Whitetail do some damage to crops.

Landowners refuse to understand that in many cases they have created the problem or at least contributed. Like winter crops that are sowed in the autumn, and were basically non-existent few decades ago. Or planting pines instead of natural process or sowing that creates vastly more seedlings. If you plant 2000 pine per hectare and are expecting 1500 of them to reach maturity, there isn't much room for damage by moose, snow and so on.

 

[KimE]

The target level for fresh yearly damage on pine 1-4m heigh are 2% so its far from it, it wouldn`t be fun to take it down to that few mooses on your vaccation and weekends. Moose are managed in huge älgskötselområden/moose managment areas, we do tradititionally hunt them as a team/hunting clubs so as many hunters as possible can take part of the hunting, paying professional hunters are against the tradition even it might came to that then the rural population get smaller and smaller. A team usually manage 2-8000ha here in the north and some hunters own their own plot and other like me lease 100-200ha inside the huntig area my cost are about 200£.

 

[KimE]

The deer we have most of here are reindeer but they are semi domestic herded by Sami people, they dont make tree damage. Rein deer are the main prey for wolverine, lynx and bear do also take many of them. Wolf are kept out of the rein deer herding areas and are shot as soon they beguinn to take rein deers. The Sami village are payed too have populations of Lynx, Wolverine, bear and eagles on their areas and they often get permission to shoot problem animals. Up to maybee 20% of the calfs can be taken by carnivores so it becomes a huge problem. We do also have a population of roedeers they dont do much damage to forrest, lynx can take out a local population of roedeers as they hunt by roedeer paths wintertime and take them one after one if the roedeers are feeded with only a few ways to get the winter food.