We often talk about how to manage wildlife populations, and we’ve even discussed these topics in some length here on HAMS Blog. However, we quite often fail to fully discuss one of the most important topics: what are the requirements for having a specific type of game on our land, what are the features of the habitat they require and what should we do to get the most out of our land?

So, in this article, we are going to take a look at what habitat actually is and how important good habitat management is when managing our game populations.

Now more than ever, we need to focus on protecting our planet and the conservation of it. With one of the main problems being climate change, with every year that passes we are losing more and more species to extinction. Understandably, we are becoming more concerned about the future of both ours and the next generation’s lives.

Some blame politics for this; some blame our way of living, some say that hunting contributes to it, and some of us, we take action…

But how can we take action? What can we do to play our part?

Well, as part of our ongoing series today we are going to look at wildlife management and ask what exactly is wildlife management, what role does is play in conservation, and how can hunting help in the fight against biodiversity loss, and... finally, is it really that important?

A look at how the British shooting and hunting community has reacted to the recent licensing issues. 

There are many aspects of successful game management, some of them are straightforward and obvious, whilst others are less clear and often induce heated but professional debate.

Falling into the latter is the necessity and various methods of predator control.

Let's take a closer look at this contradictory topic.

In this following series of new articles we are going to introduce you to various different deer management methods and systems from around the world where deer plays an important role in wildlife management.

There are a number of very different approaches to this topic in various countries and here we are simply presenting them rather than saying whether one is better than another. All of the management systems we will discuss can be appropriate under certain circumstances and each one has been developed to suit the different biological, ecological, economical and anthropological influences of the area where they are practiced.

We can all learn something from each of them. It is up to you, how you use the information presented here.

Ok, so now we’ve gotten the “disclaimer” out the way let’s start with our first country, Austria.

Let’s be clear, hunting isn’t poaching

Unfortunately, to some people hunting and poaching are starting to become synonymous, but one does certainly not equate to the other. But it is one of the main reasons why the reputation of hunting and hunters is in free fall these days.

These two words might seem contradictory together but let me clear this up.

Ethical, controlled and regulated hunting is the most efficient method of population control.  

If the number of animals in a specific area reaches or exceeds that area's capacity, the animal population starts to consume more than the environment can provide and the area starts to become depleted. The given population grows on and collapses after reaching a critical level. This happens due to the lack of resources, heavily decreased health of the species as well as many other reasons.