Landowner and hunter's rights over red deer stocks management in several regions in Europe.

There is a major concern across European nations about the management of wild large herbivores (red and roe deer, elk, moose) and their abundance and economic effects on forest ecosystems. The present study applies the analytical framework of Institutional Resource Regimes to understand the problems of controlling red‐ and roe deer populations. We describe how the rights over the game and over hunting are distributed between the landowner and the hunter in 12 countries in Europe. While legal property rights system establishes who owns the animals, public policies (e.g. hunting regulations) define who owns the right to hunt and which qualifications (minimum hunting area, licenses, management plans) are needed for that activity. The lack of coherence between the property rights system and the public policies has significant consequence on ecological sustainability of forestland management, as shown in six selected regions, for which a deeper analysis was perfomed.