Patrijzenmonitoring in Vlaanderen: Analyse van de controletellingen in de periode 2022-2023

One of the two conditions for hunting partridge under Flemish hunting legislation is the presence of at least 3 breeding pairs per 100 ha of open space within the hunting grounds affiliated to the game management unit (WBE). Since 2021, hunters have had to inventory and report partridges according to a standardised counting protocol to the Agency for Nature and Forest. Each year, the Agency has a study agency apply the same counting protocol to a sample of sites as a check.
The 2023 targeted checks were based on anomalous results from combinations of the 2021 and 2022 observations. Untargeted controls were conducted in randomly selected hunting sites in WBSs participating in the censuses and in hunting sites that are part of an ongoing partridge survey. We find no detectable difference in the 2022 and 2023 data between densities based on the study agency data and those based on hunters' data.