Game is a natural and inherent part of our forests and landscapes. However, when the numbers of especially cloven-hoofed, herbivorous game are too high, excessive damage to the forest occurs through browsing, bark stripping, gnawing, and other types of damage.

Since 2020, the ÚHÚL has been working on a new methodology for determining the amount of hunting based on the development of the rate of damage to the forest by cloven-hoofed, herbivorous game. According to this new methodology, the minimum level of hunting necessary to gradually achieve game numbers that do not cause more than sustainable damage to the forest and its functions can be calculated.

The prerequisite for the application of the methodology is the existence of continuous monitoring of newly occurring game damage (based on the principle of sampling methods used by the National Forest Inventory in the Czech Republic) and at the same time the availability of reliable data on the hunting carried out and its structure (number of hunted females, males and young). The methodology is not very suitable for small areas where the development of forest damage by game cannot be monitored statistically reliably and simultaneously at reasonable costs. The size of the area should also be sufficient because of the practical impossibility of taking into account in the calculations the migration of game that occurs among areas with different hunting intensities.