Publication

Summary

The landowners income from forestry and farming has decreased, mainly due to changes in international trade and trade conventions, and they are looking for new sources of income. In Norway, as opposed to Canada and USA, the landowner holds the right to hunt on their own land, and the meat from the hunt is sold on the free market. Still, a large, but unknown portion of the hunting permits are used in a closed market of landowners, their friends and local people where the only economic value of hunting is free or cheap meat to hunter and landowner. With increasing moose populations and increasing potential income for the landowner, more hunting permits are sold on the open market, where the hunters pay for the meat and/or the hunting experience. The main economic costs are moose browsing on pine plantations and moose-vehicle collisions. Crop damage is an additional small cost. The socio-economic estimates of benefits and costs vary considerably depending on the methods used. The two main estimation problems are the closed hunting market and damage to plantations, which first gives economical losses in about 100 years. The estimates of the total annual revenue range from 70 to 90 million US$ and the costs from 23 to 80 million US$. When setting the economic carrying capacity for moose the increased costs of forest damage and traffic accidents and mitigating countermeasures should be compared to the increase in income associated with one more moose added to the population. In Norway, the regional management units sets the regional goals, whereas the duty of national wildlife authorities is to see that violating of national and international goals not occurs. To succeed in managing the moose population to an optimal economic carrying capacity, a broad co-operation between interest groups and detailed spatial-economic and ecological knowledge will be needed. We predict that increased economic revenue will become an important objective for many of the coming moose regions.