Hallgatói dolgozatok

Student essays

Conservation and game management of capercaillie
By Johan Haugen

The wood grouse or capercaillie is the biggest of the game birds in Norway, when excluding the different goose species. It is regarded, as one of the most challenging hunting objects the Norway has to offer. It is seen as an indicator species in that is has quite strict demands on the biotope.

Wood grouse 1 naturboka.jpeg Picture from the Amateur Naturalist by Gerald and Lee Durrell, Norwegian edition.

This species needs a wide range of biotope types in is habitat to survive. The males and females have different demands and the young all have specific requirement to the habitat, and if only one of this is damaged or disturbed in some way it will probably show in the population of the wood grouse. I will focus on a part of a population in a specific are in Norway that I know well myself, and I have a reasonable recollection of the resent interferences in the area.
I will try to discuss some of the typical game management measures in relation with the specific area and with a focus on the grown males and their requirements.

General facts about the species:

The wood grouse, Tetrao urogallus belongs to the Galliformes order in the class Aves (Birds).
The males typically weigh about 4- 5,5kg. The females are smaller, about 2-2,5kg.
The males (Pictures) are grey, black. The females have a brown colouring similar to grouse and black grouse females.
Capercaillie is a LEK species. It might explain some of the extreme differences between the sexes. The firsts picture shows the male during the spring LEK.
The LEK takes place in spring, usually around the start of May. The male has no role in the fostering of the young.
The female often lays 6-8 eggs directly on the ground, 2-3days after mating and they hatch after 25-29days of nesting. Still their reproduction rate is slow compared to other game birds like grouse.
It is found in coniferous and mixed forests in the hole of Norway. Also found in Russia, Sweden and Finland.
Berries and heather plants are the main food the summer season. In winter the pine needles are the staple diet. The young chicks eat insects. The adults are known to eat small animal like lizards and insects.

Sightings of capercaillie made by me during hiking, working and hunting both big and small game the last 4 years:

Map of wood grouse sightings. jpeg Scanned and modified map of the area. Hemne activity map published by Hemne municipality in 1998. (1:75 000)

Most of the sightings are from the late summer and autumn.

• The red circles are sightings of grown or young males.
• The green are sightings of females with young or on nests
• New clear cuts are marked in blue. (4 and 5)

Sightings of grown females without young are not marked. The blue circle is my house.

Several “hotspots” of sightings and two large clear-cut fields are marked on the map:

1. The area here is no major interferences in this area in resent years. It is a mixed area consisting of pine, birch trees together with wet areas. It is a quite open landscape. These are the sightings highest in altitude. It borders to the treeless mountain area to the north. It is the mouth of a narrow valley in the side of the mountain. Sightings are most often at the top of the valley or right around it.
2. This area is the top edge of an older pine forest. It consists of tall straight pines. Just south of the hotspot there has recently been a large clear cut.
3. This area the border between a new clear cut, old planted forest (Densely planted spruce), wet areas, mixed birch forests with stripes of older pine forests.
4. One of the clear cuts. The soil is mixed, some is sandy some is very wet. About 4000 spruce trees were planted 2 year ago. No sightings of males or females have been made here.
5. This is the biggest clear cut. It lies in a south faced slope. The area has rich soil and it was an older pine/mixed forest before the cut. 10 000 spruce trees have been planted. At the top part, 1000 pines have been planted. In this area my only sighting of a female on the nest took place. One the vest side there is a larger old spruce field. (60-70years old) I regard this cut as the greatest loss. Although the area now is very green, and hare, red deer, moose and roe deer have been seen, the new spruce trees will in the long run take over. The area will become a desert compared to the previous and current status. Good thinning work might help.

It should be noted the spruce is not a native species in the local area of Hemne. There is a mountain pass that the spruce can’t cross. Pine is the natural conifer. The spruce fields are planted to dense for at least for the males. Also the spruces don’t have much of feeding value during the winter.

What kind of factors influences the numbers in the local wood grouse population in at the Dalum property, Hemne, Norway?

• Hunting
• Predation
• Habitat destruction

Hunting:
In the local area there is a very limited number of hunters. During the last 3 years only one cock has been killed in this area and no females or younger birds. The reason for this is largely that only the landowners hunt in the area. And that they have a large emphases on the big game. There are on the other hand signs of poaching. Shotgun shells have been found that do not belong to any of the legal hunters. Still wood grouse hunting is hard and not very rewording in the sense of animals’ shot. A statistic published in the Jakt og Fiske magazine in Norway said that the average time used for every male shot is 42 days. And I have found that this statistic must be quite accurate in our area. Also, there are more shots fired than birds bagged. This most certainly means that there are wounded birds that get away without having been found and recorded as killed. Local hunters have a good knolegde of the area and they could be very destructive if they hunted harder on the known hotspots. Since the capercaillie seem to aggregate, hunters with this knowledge could do damage to the local population. Luckily, this doesn’t seem to be the fact in the local area. But might be a factor in the country overall.

Predation:
There are a number of predators that are known to eat capercaillie. The grown males, of course have fewer predators that the young chicks. Predators in the area include marten, red fox, stoat, mink, badger, ravens, crows, eagle and other birds of prey. Also lynx and wolverine are known to have been in the area for shorter periods of time. But this are not factors to be considered locally. Cats and dogs might also kill capercaillie chicks.

One of the more traditional ways of game management is predator control and indeed during the worst of the scabies epidemic on red fox there was an increase in some game species. Still this method is regarded as largely ineffective. They are also in my eyes ethical reasons for not letting predator control go out of hand. Eradicating native species because of their capability of competing with human hunters are not compatible with moderns hunting. Some of the predator species have what seems to be unnaturally large population in our area. Crows, fox, maybe badger are species where culling might help more wood grouse chicks survive the first months. Mink is non-native species and should be removed or kept down to a minimum still it’s not present in large numbers in the given area. Birds of prey don’t have large enough population in the area to damage the population. Sightings are rare.

Marten is one of the predators having many of the same requirements as the wood grouse for habitat. (Older pine forest) Also wood grouse are a part of their natural diet. The marten has had made a comeback in resent year after a disturbing slump in the population. It now looks like the marten has a health population in the area. A few cases of successful trapping and sightings are hopefully signs that we will be able to enjoy the company of this animal also in the future.

Marten 1 naturboka.jpeg Picture from the Amateur Naturalist by Gerald and Lee Durrell, Norwegian edition.

Habitat destruction:
This include, building of timber roads, clear-cuts, dense plantations, plantations of foreign trees, power lines, cottage building, destruction of LEK sites, cultivation of land, pollution and drainage of wet areas.

Of this the clear cuts and the plantation of new dense spruce fields seem to be the factor with the most influence in the given area. Foreign trees like the Russian Sitka spruce where tried in small scale locally, but never caught on. It might be because of the largely conservative mindset of the local landowners. The area has been used for timber and firewood production for several hundred years. The difference now is that way the cut. Clear cutting of larger areas, instead of picking out single trees spread over a larger area might have a negative effect.

Keeping the areas small and leaving some large trees in the clearings are measurements to reduce the damage. Several other game species and probably also young and females will benefit from smaller clearings in the forest actually increasing populations.

The clear cuttings usually involve construction of timber roads and drainage of wet areas. Still the area is quite wet with lots of marshes that hopefully give the young chicks good conditions. And timber road constructions are usually very restrictive and used mostly in winter when heavy machines do the least damage. The area is generally too wet and steep for the heaviest machines. Timber roads might be positive in some ways for the grown individuals. They need stones of certain size and shape for their gizzard. The open roads provide the animals the choice of stones without having to travel far. In winter wood grouse is often seen early in the morning on roads, picking stones.

No LEK site has been found in the area or in the immediate surrounding, this is problem. Cutting in LEK site should be extremely restricted. There have been heated discussions on the importance of preservation these sites. Timber interests generally take the view that the location of these sites has little importance, and that the capercaillie always will find a place to mate. On the other side the hunters and conservation forces, views these sites as very important and says cutting here will do great damage. I believe that it’s better to protect the sites as long as we don’t know for sure what effects cutting will have. Also a LEK site might be in use for hundreds of years giving spectacular sights for the nature interested. With a large number of male collecting on one place to give their great display of force and beauty, they are a spectacular sight. Finding the LEK site and agreeing on its protection is high up on the list of conservation actions that should be taken.

As a conclusion of this essay I would say that the wood grouse is a species that are capable of handling most effects of predation and hunting, but the destruction of the old pine forest might do this species great harm. The time will tell, in the meantime it looks like the local forest owners and also the authorities leans towards a line of less disturbance of the nature. In this area the growth of the forests are larger than the cutting. But the males need old pine forests and it needs to be protected and handled with care if the capercaillie population is not to decrease. No real scientific work has been done in the area I’m righting about. Sightings of birds and other observations might have different reasons than my conclusions and assumptions.

Wood grouse 2 Jegerproveboka.jpeg Picture from Jegerproveboka.

The Armature Naturalist (Naturboka, Norwegian edition)
Dorling Kindersley Limited
ISBN 82-525-1116-3

Article series in Jakt og Fiske. (Hunting and fishing magazine by the Norwegian hunter and fisher association.)
Articles in Bondebladet. (Newspaper by the Norwegian farmer association.)
Articles in Norsk Skogeier magasin. (Norwegian forest owners’ magazine)