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Sweden has planned to kill 486 brown bears as part of its controversial licensed trophy hunting season starting August 21.
Conservationists fear the move will eliminate 20 per cent of Sweden’s brown bear population which is listed as a “Strictly protected species” under European Union law, putting a dent on its 100 years of brown bear conservation.
A ‘Strictly protected species’ means no population regulating hunting of the animal is permitted in accordance with the EU Habitats Directive norms.
However, the Swedish government is accused of breaching the law for brown bears which are also classified as “Near Threatened” according to the Swedish Red List (2020).
The List is published by the Swedish Species Information Centre (SLU Artdatabanken) at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
Besides the 486 bears, another 50-100 bears face the threat of being killed in what the Swedish government has termed as a “protective hunt”. This is according to a statement by Sweden’s ‘Big Five’ carnivore protection project. The project is run by multiple organisations that provide information on carnivores in the country.
In 2023, the Swedish government permitted the killing of 648 bears under its licensed hunting quota policy. An additional 74 bears were killed as part of “protective hunting”.
“The Swedish government is on a clear path to bring down Sweden’s bear population as close as possible to a defined minimum level, called “Favourable reference population”, which would mean about 1,400 bears. The country had 2,450 bears in 2023 according to the official survey estimate. In total, this means a loss of almost 60 per cent of Sweden’s bears, compared to 2008, when the officially estimated number was 3,300 bears,” the Big Five statement read.
It further highlighted that poaching is a problem and a crime, but excess trophy hunting has become a bigger threat for the bear population when combined with generous permissions for protective hunting.
The licensed hunt is officially justified by the government as a method to actively reduce the total number of bears, it stated.
Conservationists pointed out that the brown bear is a top predator in Sweden and influences the population size and behaviour of its prey species. Being omnivores, the bears feed on ants, berries and vegetation and assist in seed dispersal.
Jonas Kindberg, leader of the ‘Scandinavian Bear project’, a research programme run jointly by the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) said, “We can absolutely not continue to shoot this many bears if we are to have a stable population around the 2,400 bears we have today.”
He added that the move will have critical consequences for the species’ population which takes around 3 to 4 years to mature and bears only a few cubs at a time every two to three years.
Conservationists also fear that the hunt is likely to skew the male-female ratio, which will take a long time to be rectified.
Magnus Orrebrant, chairman of the Swedish Carnivore Association, suggested co-existence as a solution, taking cues from other countries such as Finland.
Sweden’s neighbour has developed bear watching as a tool for countryside development.
Urging strict limits for protecting hunting, Orrebrant cited an example, “As comparison, an estimated 12,000 brown bears live on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, according to the BBC. They live in an area of 83,000 sq km (20 per cent of Sweden’s land size) with a human population density three times as high as that in Sweden. Additionally, there is also a large population of Asian black bears, estimated to 10,000 individuals, in one of the world’s most densely populated countries.”
The bear hunting will add to the list of violations by Sweden as it has previously been accused of licensed wolf hunts. A case in this regard has already been filed at the European Commission against Sweden.
Another formal complaint has also been lodged with the EU Commission in April 2024 concerning Sweden’s licensed hunt of lynx.
