Den skånska faunans monarki: En studie angående den skånska kronviltspopulationen

Sammanfattning: The red deer is an animal that most of us know and expect when speaking of big animals in the Swedish fauna. But this has not always been the case. The red deer was almost extinct in the beginning of the 20th century, the life force is mostly regained today but there are still hurdles in the way. The increase in population of the red deer mean an economic conflict with land owners because of its ability to create costly damages by chewing bark and ruining crops. The economic pressure is almost always adjusted through means of hunting, but knowledge about the red deer is essential to simultaneously retain a healthy population. This study aims to help doing that, by mapping the red deer population and its movement patterns. The study was done partly by interpretation and calculations based on statistics from external sources and partly by a population survey done by us. The statistics used apply to year 2010-2017. The survey took part on 6 different occasions in April 2018 in the eastern part of Revingehed in Scania. The study showed that the growth of the population of red deer has stabilised during the last years and now seem to circle around 2100 individuals. We also concluded that the red deer’s movements seemed to focus around open landscapes during the evening hours and that our study area represented almost 11 times as high red deer density as the rest of the license area in Scania. A population of 2100 individuals may intuitively feel healthy, but we still need more studies regarding the distribution of age and sex in the red deer population if we want to draw this conclusion more reliably.