Sweden has started its 2025 wolf hunt, with an aim to kill 30 wolves between Jan. 2 and Feb. 15.
By the end of Jan. 2, hunters had shot 10 wolves (Canis lupus), according to Sweden Herald.
Most recent estimates put wolf numbers in Sweden at roughly 375 by late 2023, a decline of nearly 20% from 2022.
The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) had previously said that about 300 wolves could exist in Sweden for “favourable conservation status.” In October 2024, though, the Swedish government announced that it intended to lower the minimum level further to 170 in the coming years.
It issued licenses for 30 individuals to be shot in 2025. An additional 20 wolves can be killed if seen as a threat to life or property, Sweden Herald reported.
The government has claimed that wolves are a threat to farmers’ livestock, dogs and people. Some hunters have said that “hunting is absolutely necessary to slow the growth of wolves.”
However, wildlife conservation groups and scientists argue that hunting wolves will “dramatically threaten” the already fragile status of the canid in Sweden, which had no breeding wolf population between 1966 and 1983. Moreover, culling doesn’t solve livestock predation issues, they add.
Benny Gäfvert, carnivore expert at WWF Sweden, said in a statement that “the EU Commission’s own in-depth analysis failed to find any evidence that culling wolves reduces attacks on livestock. Rather, research has shown that the risk of attacks on livestock increases when wolves are killed so that wolf packs break up. Then young wolves are forced to find food on their own and they are then more likely to attack livestock.”
Magnus Orrebrant, chair of the Swedish Carnivore Association, told Mongabay by email that wolf-livestock conflict isn’t even that big in Sweden, and that the government favors culling wolves over providing support for coexistence measures.
Sweden’s anti-wolf sentiment is driven mainly by hunting organizations, Orrebrant added. “Hunting organizations in Sweden are subsidized by the government to take care of ‘wildlife management’, but a lot of this money is used to lobby for hunting and against the wolf,” he said.
Wildlife management decisions in Sweden are taken county-wise by delegations severely overrepresented by the hunting lobby, journalist Misha Istratov wrote for Mongabay. Hunters are also “disproportionately represented among the top politicians,” Istratov added.
Conservation groups have previously appealed to the European Commission and legally challenged the wolf cull quotas in courts. However, “the Swedish courts are listening to political agenda and overruling our complaints,” Orrebrant said.
The anti-wolf sentiment extends beyond Sweden. In December 2024, the Standing Committee of the Bern Convention, which governs wildlife protection in the EU, voted to downgrade the wolf’s status in Europe from “strictly protected” to “protected” based on claims that wolves were a danger to livestock. The European Ombudsman is investigating a complaint that this claim was not based on scientific evidence.
This article by Shreya Dasgupta was first published by Mongabay.com on 3 January 2025. Lead Image: Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus) courtesy of Staffan Widstrand/Swedensbigfive.org.
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