The right to property and the right to hunting versus the responsibility for hunting damages

Abstract

Many controversies have surfaced recently in connection with the legal basis of the model and functioning of hunting in Poland. In accordance with the currently binding legal solutions in this respect the right to hunting is not directly linked to the ownership of land and wild animals constitute a national good whose legal owner is the State Treasury. Such definition of the ownership of wild animals represents a specific way of emphasizing their significance as a supreme value within the natural environment system, as well as their importance for the shaping and protection of the natural environment. To optimize hunting management as an aspect of environmental protection, it is being carried out within selected administrative areas, called hunting inspectorates, which are leased to hunting circles or managed by appropriate institutions. At the same time, issues associated with legal responsibility for damage done by game to cultivated fields arouses serious controversies. This responsibility is transferred to leaseholders or supervisors of hunting inspectorates, who cover the arising obligations from their own resources, including funds obtained from the sale of the wild animals' carcasses which, by law, constitute their property. Such form of legal solutions determines the striving for optimization of hunting management and, simultaneously, limits the responsibility of the legal owner of game for damage done by it.