News P4 Varmland
This weekend was a predator symposium in Karlstad, organized by the Nature Conservation Society of Värmland. The wolf was the focus, and among a number of lecturers were wolf researcher Olof Liberg from Grimsö Research Station.
He sees two future paths for the wolf population to go:
“The EU calls it ‘favorable conservation status’. Then we take care of ourselves and I’m guessing that the strain harbors around 400 animals. But it requires that we fix genetics,” says Olof Liberg.
The second way is significantly more irregular according Olof Liberg.
“Where there is the free development and the only hunting allowed is controlled hunting of problem animals. Then the wolf population may grow to nearly 2,000 animals in this wolf area of ??Sweden and Norway,” explains Olof Liberg.
In this latter case, he sees a lot of problems such as the availability of elk hunting will be much less than today. Another problem is that many more sheep and dogs will be the prey of the wolf while the reindeer will have far more wolves in their area.
“I think that hunting rights holders will allow the placement of wolf pups. I also think that nature conservation should compromise with the wolf-skepticism that is at the countryside and accept that you can hold a limited stock, but with beneficial conservation, that is, a wolf population with good genes without inbreeding,” says Olof Liberg.
Roy Malmborg