Roughly translated by TWIN Observer
TT
After several times the judiciary is now over ruling the Supreme Administrative Court: it is the licensed hunting of wolves. During the hunt, which begins on Monday, 24 wolves may be shot.
The Supreme Administrative Court is following the Administrative Court’s line and will not stop hunting license for 2017.
Torbjorn Nilsson, President of the Swedish Association predators, is unhappy with the decision.
“I think it’s an unfortunate and surprising decision,” he says to TT and continues:
“In the short term, this means that four wolf territories will be pushed away and it slows the increase in population size needed.”
Not surprisingly, it sounds different in Swedish Hunters Association.
“We think of course that it is a good decision. It has favorable conservation and we should be able to hunt an animal,” says Torbjörn Lövbom, president of the Hunters Association predator advisor.
Right of Varmland
Torbjörn Lövbom is pleased also and he believes that the court took the wolf’s impact on human habitat, but find that 24 wolves are low.
“This year’s hunt was supposed to have been carried out and then it was 48 wolves. Then you have to take into account this year’s low number of future years, so increasing the number,” he says.
In 2016 decided four county councils that 48 wolves would get shot. The Administrative Court and the Administrative Court of Appeal, however, stopped the hunt in Värmland. Finally 14 wolves were shot in 2016, according to the National Veterinary Institute (SVA).
The Supreme Administrative Court is now making a different assessment than the Administrative Court and the Administrative Court of Appeal and believes that this year’s hunting license in Värmland ought to have been implemented.
affects people
“It is welcome, now we have proof that we made a good decision,” says Maria Falkevik, predators manager at the County Administrative Board of Värmland.
She says it’s too early to say what the effects will be of no wolves were shot this year, but says Varmland had a trend of increasing population in wolf territory.
“It affects people’s lives. In principle, everyone who lives in the countryside in Varmland affected by the presence of wolves, especially those who have sheep and goats where there is a risk of attack,” she says.
SSNC appealed
The boards’ decision to allow hunting in 2017 has previously appealed by including Nature Conservation in administrative law and of an environmental organization of Appeal.
SSNC “regrets but respects” the decision, which is based on the wolf population conditions in autumn 2015.
“The knowledge available today on the Scandinavian wolf stock’s genetic situation shows in our opinion clearly that this stock has not been favorable conservation status” writes President Johanna Sandahl in a press release.
Fact: wolf population
The latest survey results from the Environmental Protection Agency – winter 2015/2016 – shows that there are 340 wolves in Sweden.
The year before, 415 wolves are believed to have existed in Sweden.
The reasons for the decrease are believed to be more:
The natural variability of deaths and births is believed to be one.
Hunting License directed against the territory to reduce the concentration is another possible cause.
Quests Protection and illegal hunting also affects.
Source: Environmental Protection Agency
Fact: Hunting License
Licensed hunting of wolves starts January 2. Total includes 24 licensed hunting of wolves. These are six wolves in Dalarna, six in Gavleborg, six in Värmland and lays in an area around the border between Värmland and Örebro.
A year ago, the wolf hunt for appeals under clean throng of court decisions, some of which are temporary. In some counties conducted hunt, elsewhere stopped it.
Hunting Regulation has been amended so that decisions from across the country decided in the courts at each level. The decisions were appealed, therefore, first to the administrative court in Lulea and then to the Administrative Court of Appeal in Sundsvall. Both courts went though the county administrative boards line.
In the Administrative Court judgments are also two additional compounds – Nordulv respective Wolf Association – the so-called ‘standing, that is to say that organizations have the right to be parties wolf hunting case.
2016 convicted 14 wolves in Gävleborg and Dalarna in licensed hunting.
Source: TT, the National Veterinary Institute (SVA).