Abstract
Although there are many deer cull programs for population control in Japan, successful examples are scarce. One of the reasons is the lack of a training program for wildlife rangers and cullers. To consider this problem, we held a symposium, entitled “A training system of future wildlife rangers and cullers” on Feb. 14, 2015 in Sapporo, Hokkaido. We invited Mr. Norman Healy, a wildlife management officer from the Forestry Commission England, to give a keynote lecture on the training system for rangers and “Deer Stalking Certificate”. He also talked about a return system for income from deer meat and hunting licenses into forest management. Some approaches for training hunters done by Hokkaido government were insufficient. It would be difficult to achieve the target level of sika deer (Cervus nippon) population management in Hokkaido because of a lack of working systems. We pointed out that we should distinguish the roles of cullers from those of hunters and create systems to utilize the former properly in culling programs. In 2015, the new certification for wildlife rangers and cullers will be established. This certification is modeled on the Deer Stalking Certificate in England, and is improved corresponding to the Japanese style. We propose the training system of human resources for wildlife management in Japan.
