Estimating damage caused by wild animals to crops by comparing yields

Abstract

Growing populations of large herbivores have caused significant damage to crops in recent years. The situation is exacerbated by the lack of reliable methods for determining the extent of the damage and for the subsequent calculation of the compensation for the destroyed crops. In this study, we defined the conditions and options for application of method for estimating damage caused by wild animals, which is based on comparison of yields in damaged and undamaged areas. This method is a good compromise between time consumption and accuracy of the damage determination. The proposed method also covers competition problems (undamaged plants with eliminated competition may have an increased yield) and growth compensation (for example when the plant is damaged at an early stage of growth) that the currently used methods could not objectively evaluate. This method is also suitable for determining the damage of a wide range of agricultural crops. The method described is a thought experiment and needs to be tested in practice to compare its accuracy and complexity with other methods.

Keywords

• Crop damage
• browsing
• wild herbivores
• damage quantification