torsdag 7. januar 2010


Her er utviklingen av den norske ulvesonen.
Her er hva New Scientist skrev i 2005.

Permission given to hunt endangered wolves

  • 22 January 2005 New Scientist
  • Magazine issue 2483. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

The Norwegian government is allowing recreational hunters to shoot wolves, even though the animals are classified as an endangered species.

The country's Directorate for Nature Management will allow five grey wolves to be killed during the current hunting season. Even this small number is causing concern, as Norway's entire wolf population is thought to number only around 25. A female wolf was shot just days after the hunt was approved earlier this month.

"Our environment minister is probably the first ever to open a regular hunt on an endangered animal population in his own country," says Rasmus Hansson, secretary-general of WWF-Norway.

The wolves can only be shot if they stray outside the wolf protection area in the south-eastern part of the country, on the Swedish border. Last year, under pressure from farmers who fear their livestock is under threat from an expanding wolf population, a newly elected parliament decided to shrink the protection area to half its former size.

Sheep farmers lose around 30,000 animals a year to bears, wolverines, lynxes and wolves. In the past, farmers were allowed to shoot wolves, estimated to be responsible for 2000 of the kills, only if they were caught in the act of stealing livestock. The farmers support the hunt, which will end on 15 February.

Throughout Scandinavia there are thought to be around 100 wolves, most of them in Sweden. The species was once extinct in the region, but the population began to recover in 1978 when a lone wolf pair from a pack that roams Russia and Finland arrived on the peninsula and started breeding.

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