Hunting and fishing harvest data collection: a horizon scanning exercise from the French context

Legal and societal moves increasingly lead leisure hunting and fishing practitioners to record their harvest. The total number of individuals harvested per population per year is the minimum required information to feed into demographic models and allow science‐based management. Some few schemes record more detailed data, hence allowing better‐informed decisions to be made. France has an extended list of legally harvested species and a wide variety of exploitation modes, which leads to a large number of harvest data collection schemes. This country is therefore taken as a case study to review the variety of situations and the pros and cons of each protocol. This review outlines a set of best practices that can guide future harvest data collection schemes both nationally and internationally, distinguishing basic information that is needed for minimum management from additional data that allow for more detailed knowledge. It highlights the trade‐off between using simple tools and clear protocols to encourage user participation, and the need for more detailed data to support advanced modeling techniques used for modern population and harvest management.