The report is the final first year report of the FLEG II project assignment “ Analysis of the legislative framework of hunting industry of Ukraine and development of improved proposals”.

The report is presented in Ukrainian and consists of three sections and annexes of some statistic information on management issues, institutional overlapping in control functions between The Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine and Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine (Annex 7), as well as fighting poaching state statistics between 1996 and 2007 (Annex 8), and the list of analyzed legislative framework is published in an Annex 10.

First two sections contain an analyses of identified organizational problems in the domestic hunting sector, legal and regulatory support of game activity, administrative and socio-economic effects of state regulation of hunting in modern Ukraine. The third section summarizes the information about published specified press releases for FLEG 2 and WWF web sites.

The Section 1 concentrated at the collisions of hunting government regulations in Ukraine, poaching, and other problems. Among the main complications is a politically postponed payment for the use of hunting grounds (was until 2015 – at the time of the report writing), which has negative impact on the enforcement of national legislation and prevents from establishing competitive mechanism. Thus, executive authorities are able to define their own users of hunting grounds. Under these conditions, social and economic so-called “elite” become their users. This prevents an engagement of many local citizens into hunting and keeps level of corruption at high level.

The other main reasons, which cause inefficient organization of hunting and hammer the development of the sector, have been summarized to: (1) an unsatisfactory legal framework (the lack of clear procedure of leasing hunting grounds, bag limits approval, capacity and standards of game animals); (2) inefficient legal support of the regional game managers activity in the fight against poaching; (3) lack of the qualifying requirements for game keepers, lack of the efficient mechanism of compensation for damages caused by game species; (4) inadequate legal regulation of administrative services providing in the hunting industry (in relation to issuing of an annual control card for a record of bagged game and violation of hunting rules) and ineffective law enforcement by authorized state executive bodies (an absence of effective state control of the current legislation requirements, duplication of public authority competences, etc.); (5) deficient organization of wildlife farming in game preserves and breeding of rare species of animals; (6) unsatisfactory interpretations of game definitions presented in the Law of Ukraine “On Hunting and Hunting Economy”; (7) imperfect interpretation of the regulatory mechanism for shooting animals with a selection or diagnostic purposes; (8) rectification of the list of harmful species and animals for gaming; (9) law violations in trophy cards issuance and organization of taxidermy. Based on the consultations with scientists, specialists, NGO representatives it was determined that the above mentioned reasons lead to losses and a negative image of hunting sector in the society.

In the Section 2, the author proposes general description of changes (not the amendments) into the legislation, suggestions and recommendations for improving law enforcement by state authorities and for further reformation and development of the sector including the sustainable developments improvements, profitability, increasing effectiveness, de-shadowing of the sector and decrease corruption, as well as increasing control and responsibility for better compliance with the hunting regulations. The study suggests further research into development of a modern national model of hunting which at the same time should take into account the best EU practices based on the principles of sustainable management of natural resources.