Wolves Under Threat in Europe
Sweden launches new wolf hunt against European Law and the EU is preparing to support it.
In May of 2022, the Swedish Government announced that it would be culling half of the country’s wolf population as part of its annual wolf hunt in defiance of European Law. Its decision has emboldened the farming lobby to push for a downgrading of wolf protections in the European Union (EU).
After being extinct in Scandinavia for roughly a hundred years, three wolves from the Russo-Finish population migrated to the region in the eighties — reestablishing a local population there. Today, the Swedish Environmental Agency estimates that there are a total of 540 wolves living in the region — 460 in Sweden and 80 in Norway.
However, the successful recovery of wolves has not been gleefully embraced by rural communities in both countries. Farmers complain that wolves attack their livestock and hunters argue that they take down their game, while both say that they have killed shepherd and hunting dogs too. Furthermore, the compensations provided by the Swedish Government for animal losses and to subsidize electrical fences are not enough to cover all of their costs according to farmers.
For these reasons both Governments lifted their bans on wolf hunting and have emitted…
