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BIONÆR-Bionæringsprogram

Improving moose forage with benefits for the hunting, forestry and farming sectors.

Tildelt: kr 5,9 mill.

This project will generate the knowledge necessary to establish new moose management practises, enabling a higher moose yield to be harvested sustainably. This would increase moose-related income, while providing economic benefits for the farming communit y, local businesses and employees in the forestry sector. We expect that by improving the availability of moose forage, autumn carcass weights and calf production can be increased. Supplementary food, grown by local farmers, will be provided in winter and areas of productive forest will be set aside to produce summer forage by fertilising, planting and coppicing deciduous trees and limiting herbicide use. The consequences of such measures for moose are currently unknown so we will determine individual win ter weight change, autumn weights and reproduction rates in relation to use of the new forage resources, recorded using GPS technology. 20 females and their calves will be marked per year for 2 years in Telemark and 2 years in Hedmark. The information gai ned will enable new, scientifically-sound management systems to be designed. The economic potential for increasing harvest yield by these measures will be assessed by cost-benefit analyses at the spatial scales of the individual property and the local com munity. While improving forage availability will obviously increase costs these will be offset by the economic benefits of greater moose harvest yields and hunting opportunities, and at the wider scale, social benefits associated with reduced traffic acci dents, increased demand for silage production, local employment and local services. This project brings together producers of winter forage, commercial forestry companies, land-owners and hunters, through a shared interest in an ecological question. All a spects of the project contribute towards stimulating the rural economy, with implications for the development of local economies throughout rural Scandinavia and the Baltic states.

Budsjettformål:

BIONÆR-Bionæringsprogram