Swedish farmers demand right to kill wolves
By Stephen Brown
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A Swedish farmer sentenced to jail for shooting a wolf preying on his sheep petitioned the government on Thursday for a pardon as a dispute grew between the wildlife lobby and farmers alarmed at growing wolf numbers.
Depleted by centuries of hunting, Sweden’s wolf population has benefited from preservation programs and legislation to now number about 150. Wolves have even been seen near Stockholm.
Animal rights groups say the population is still critically low, making it vulnerable to inbreeding and disease, but the farming and hunting lobby says wildlife laws introduced in 2001 leave their livestock and dogs unprotected from attack.
Farmer Stig Engdahl, who got a six-month sentence last May for shooting a wolf in 2003 that he believed had killed 10 of his sheep and had just attacked his neighbor’s animals, said he “would do it again if I had to”.
“I am seeking a pardon to make my case known among those who have influence,” he wrote in a petition delivered by his lawyer.
Showing that feelings are running high, about 3,000 farmers from the thickly-forested Dalarna region of central Sweden held a protest on New Year’s Eve with torches and banners reading: “One Wolf is One Too Many”.
CONSCIENCE
The influential Swedish Hunting Association launched a campaign in December to get legislation changed to give farmers and hunters more rights to shoot wolves.
The association takes issue with a clause that only permits wolves to be shot if they are killers or are caught “red-handed”. Engdahl says he was warned by a neighbor whose flock was attacked 10 minutes earlier that the same wolf was on its way to his farm.
His wife Anne-Christine told Reuters from their home in Ed that all their livestock had gone to slaughter “because our conscience forbids us from feeding the wolves with our sheep”. Stig, 64, will go to jail in March if the petition fails.
The Engdahls are unimpressed that compensation for a sheep killed by a wolf is higher than the price they fetch at the butchers. “It is our moral and legal responsibility to care for our animals,” said Anne-Christine.
At the Swedish Carnivore Society, deputy chairperson Ann Dahlerus told Reuters it was acceptable to kill “problem wolves”, but this practice had to be “extremely restrictive”.
“Wolves don’t kill much livestock, something like 100 sheep a year, but they also kill 10 or so hunting dogs which is a big issue for hunters,” she said. “The anti-wolf lobby is very loud and make themselves spokespeople for everybody in the country.”