Social complexity and hunting: challenges associated with transformations of social-ecological systems

Novel systems of multiple ungulate species have been and still are developing rapidly across Sweden. Deliberate introduction of non-native species, fallow deer and mouflon, are spreading widely across the country. Climate... [ view full abstract ]

Novel systems of multiple ungulate species have been and still are developing rapidly across Sweden. Deliberate introduction of non-native species, fallow deer and mouflon, are spreading widely across the country. Climate change is allowing native wild boar and red deer to colonize novel ranges and expand beyond their historic distribution creating multi-species systems in areas where historically only the native moose and/or roe deer existed. In parallel with these ecological changes, Sweden is undergoing a rapid urbanization and changes in values and attitudes with increasing social complexity as a result. This transformation of coupled social and ecological systems, which is not unique to Sweden but can be found across Europe, has major implications for the role of hunting and thus also for the governance and management of wildlife. Faced with these intractable social and environmental challenges, we are interested in understanding how to actively engage and transform the existing system holding such problems in place. By using Sweden as a case our objective is to define the core social and ecological elements that may potentially play a role in the transformation process, and identify the feedback mechanisms or more specifically the individual and collective responses between those elements. Furthermore we explore the institutional arrangements that have developed to address these challenges and discuss the implications of this study for future policy and institutional design of hunting and wildlife management.