Response to interpellation 2022/23:172 on measures to protect the wolf
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
KD considers that the wolf population must be kept at a manageable level to protect farmers and the food supply 1. KD wants to lower the wolf's protection status in the EU to increase the possibility of protection hunting and reduce conflicts 2. KD argues that the wolf is a predator that can be frightening, but does not want to eradicate the species 1. KD considers that the law should be followed, that the police prioritize crimes with evidence of wolf hunting 3 and that there is no connection between license hunting and increased poaching 3. KD argues that the wolf population has increased by nearly 700 percent in 20 years 3. MP considers that the wolf is strongly threatened 4. MP wants to work with preventive measures and compensation to create coexistence 4. MP is against license hunting as it does not solve the problem but increases illegal hunting 5. MP wants to focus on long-term viability 4 6.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Landsbygdsministern Peter Kullgren (KD)
Mr. Speaker! Rebecka Le Moine has asked me what measures I intend to take to strengthen the protection of the wolf.
The question is asked in light of the license hunt that has just been conducted. In the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's guidance to the county administrative boards ahead of the winter license hunt, the following was stated: "Based on the development of the wolf population in recent years, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency considers that there may now be room to decide on larger removals during the license hunt for wolves than in previous years."
The County Administrative Boards followed the guidance and decided in September that 75 wolves may be culled during the upcoming license hunt. This is the largest decided hunting quota for wolves since the license hunt was introduced. For comparison, it was decided that 33 wolves should be culled during the 2022 license hunt.
The wolf has a strong protection status today, and the development of the wolf population in Sweden has shown an increasing trend regarding the number of individuals over the last 20 years. At the latest inventory, the wolf population was approximately 460 individuals, which is significantly more than the current reference value of 300 individuals.
In this context, I also want to mention that the Riksdag in May 2022 decided on a notification regarding the reference value for the wolf population—that is, how many wolves are required for the wolf population to be considered to have a favorable conservation status—should be between 170 and 270 wolves. According to the notification, it should be kept in the lower range of 170 individuals, partly in view of the fact that the wolf population is becoming more concentrated.
The previous government simultaneously tasked the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency with investigating the reference value for wolf. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency shall analyze whether, and if so under what conditions, the wolf's reference value in terms of population size for a favorable conservation status according to the Habitats Directive could be within the range of 170-270 as specified in the bill A sustainable predator policy which the Riksdag decided on already in 2013.
I intend to follow the developments closely. The wolf must have the conditions to exist in Sweden in the long term, and we must live up to our EU legal obligations. But it needs to be a significantly smaller population than today.
Rebecka Le Moine (MP)
Mr. Speaker! We are debating the wolf, a species that is included on Sweden's red list and classified as critically endangered. This is a species that we in Sweden, from a political standpoint, have a responsibility to preserve. We also have behind us a recent global nature agreement concerning that we shall stop extinction and reverse the trend.
If I try to find something positive in the answer, it would be that the government intends for us to live up to EU legal obligations. The wolf is included in the Birds and Habitats Directive, and by virtue of our membership in the EU, we also have these obligations to preserve the species wolf.
There are many conflicts surrounding wolves in Sweden, and where I mean that it is our task as politicians to ensure that it is possible to find ways forward. It is about coexistence, and it is about preventive measures to ensure that people who are affected by wolves in different ways, who are subjected to repeated attacks and who feel anxiety, can feel that they have support. There should be information campaigns, dialogue processes, money to apply for and compensation to receive.
These questions regarding the preventive measures and how one can achieve a better coexistence are often raised in this context by Miljöpartiet alone.
It is not possible to solve the problem by shooting the wolf. As said, it also violates our conventions and the various goals we have adopted. The wolf is isolated and inbred. It is a very sensitive population that we have. With our EU membership, we have also committed ourselves to ensuring that the wolf has a favorable conservation status, something that requires long-term life populations.
In the underlying material that the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency prepared in 2015, it was assessed that a long-term viable wolf population would need to comprise at least 1,700 animals. The current Swedish reference value of 300 wolves was set to correspond to a short-term wolf population. This is an important difference between the short-term and long-term conservation of the wolf population. Even if one can imagine that Sweden could share a long-term viable wolf population with Finland, Sweden's share would reasonably be significantly larger than 300 wolves.
My question to the Minister for Rural Affairs is therefore: How do you view this? How do you mean that the announcement of lowering the reference value could be reconciled with achieving a long-term viable wolf population?
Landsbygdsministern Peter Kullgren (KD)
Mr. Speaker! In the most recently published data regarding the status of wolves in Europe, a generally positive trend for the wolf is highlighted. The wolf at a European level is assessed to be viable according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List criteria.
Our assessment is therefore that it is also reasonable to lower the wolf's protection status at the European level. If the wolf is listed in Annex V, the wolf will have the same protection according to the Habitats Directive as, for example, our Swedish seal species and the beaver. The wolf is also already listed in Annex V in a number of Member States, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Poland. Also parts of the wolf populations in Finland, Spain and Greece are listed in Annex V.
The Government does not consider it good that the protection level for wolves differs between different member states in this way. The differences can be questioned between countries and in a negative way affect the view of the directive and, in the long run, also negatively affect a long-term, sustainable management of wolves.
The previous government, as mentioned, left a mandate to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency aimed at determining under what conditions the wolf's reference value in terms of population size for a favorable conservation status according to the Habitats Directive could be within the interval 170-270.
That assignment remains, it is ongoing and we will follow it when it is reported back. But right now it is with our expert authority. The assignment also means that the authorities shall look at guidelines regarding being able to move genetically important wolves and how protection hunting can be developed to contribute to the overall goals we have in the predator policy.
I will continue to work towards lowering the wolf's protection status in the EU's regulations by proposing that the wolf be moved from Annex IV to Annex V. Such a change could increase the possibility of, for example, protection hunting to reduce conflicts between humans and wolves. Sweden would also be able to decide to a greater extent itself how the wolf should be managed.
Rebecka Le Moine (MP)
Mr. Speaker! That is something that many still repeat as a kind of truth: The more wolves we shoot in the licensed hunt, the fewer we will shoot illegally and the greater the acceptance for wolves will be.
I believe this is completely the wrong focus. If we are to increase acceptance for wolves, we need to better support the people who live in or near the territories. We need to work preventatively, we need to increase compensations, we need to, above all, review and present policies for coexistence.
My original question was in what way the Minister for Rural Affairs intends to protect the wolf and strengthen the protection. The answer I receive is that we are going to lower the protection status for the wolf, and we are also going to reduce the population. It is at least a very honest answer - not an answer I would have wished for, but it is very honest, and one can at least be grateful for that.
There are some figures that are often referred to - 170, 270, 300 wolves. If we have reached that limit, which is often referred to as some kind of pain threshold, then we have achieved a favorable conservation status. This is once again about short-term viability.
I am a conservation biologist. We often talk about long-term viability, and that is also what is included in the legal concept of favorable conservation status, which we have to adhere to at least as long as we are in the EU. We will have to see if this becomes a swexit issue or not.
If you dig a little bit into these studies and figures, you can also quickly find that the study's main author has written that it is "abuse of science", i.e., misuse of science, to use the figures in this way because one only talks about the short-term in these modelings and scenarios. In reality, we have other factors that also play a role, but they are not included when these figures are produced. Therefore, we need to reassess and look at other figures as soon as we talk about long-term, viable populations.
Another threat to the wolf is precisely the illegal hunting. It has shown that the more wolves we shoot legally, the more the illegal hunting of wolves seems to increase. Shooting occurs in our national parks, something surrounded by a great culture of silence. There are also organizations that have declared zero visions regarding wolves. Now, the Christian Democrats themselves have not said that they have a zero vision, but they have said that they want to halve the wolf population and lower the status. We are therefore not quite in the radical camp of phasing out and totally exterminating a species.
Such organizations do exist, however, and such an organization has also received million-sum amounts from Naturvårdsverket. I find this very frightening because it directly violates the environmental goals we have and the conventions we have just signed which are about us truly preserving the wolf, stopping the extinction, and reversing the trend.
I have the following questions for the Minister for Rural Affairs: How will you ensure that illegal hunting is reduced? What tools do you have and what measures will you take to tackle the illegal hunting of red-listed species?
Landsbygdsministern Peter Kullgren (KD)
Mr. Speaker! I believe that Rebecka Le Moine and I can knock different organizations that receive grants from the Swedish state against each other for the rest of this entire debate and several other interpellation debates. Therefore, I do not intend to comment on the organizations that Rebecka Le Moine supports.
I, the Christian Democrats, and the government do not believe that we should eradicate the wolf in Sweden. It is about having a controlled hunt and about wanting to protect one's property, one's animals, and ultimately oneself from a predator, which is not a fairy tale character, which is a predator with the capacities that predators have, which can be extremely frightening, especially in areas with high wolf concentration, where the problem becomes tangible. It is tangible for the farmer who no longer dares to keep their animals at a distance from the immediate farm environment because they are afraid of wolf attacks. It can be either because the animals are de facto torn apart or because they are scared out into the forest and become lost forever.
This has gone so far in some parts of Sweden that it affects farmers' operations extremely negatively. This, in turn, affects the food supply that we need to strengthen in our country for a number of reasons, not least the security policy situation.
I sometimes wonder when it is enough for Miljöpartiet. Over the last 20 years, the wolf population has increased by nearly 700 percent in Sweden. In Europe, nature conservation institutions consider that we have a decent development regarding the wolf. In several EU countries, the wolf population is increasing. Here, Rebecka Le Moine speaks of thousands of wolves. Is the message from Rebecka Le Moine today then that we are to have wolves in reindeer husbandry areas? Is it to be a complete distribution of wolves in Skåne and in Mälardalen? They are starting to arrive now, but not in the same way as in Dalarna and Värmland.
The density between the livestock farms in Skåne is completely different from what it is in, for example, my home county of Värmland. We do, admittedly, sometimes have major problems with injuries to domestic animals and so on, but in terms of living side by side, I actually dread the day there are even more territories and an even higher density of wolves in the southern parts of Sweden. There, the farmers keep the animals significantly closer together than in other places where the wolf is present.
We will face major problems if we cannot keep the wolf population at a manageable level. Otherwise, it will have consequences for Swedish food security, and that is not something I am prepared to accept.
Birgitta Karstensson and Karl-Erik Keck from Torsby have realized the importance of a generous protection hunt on wolves. They write in a joint statement: The protection hunt should become more generous as the wolf population grows. Soon we should be able to reach a point where every wolf that attacks domestic animals is removed quickly and effectively through a protection hunt in some form. Then we can reduce the attacks on both dogs and sheep.
Rebecka Le Moine (MP)
Mr. Speaker! There is a difference between protection hunting and license hunting, which I hope the Minister for Rural Affairs is aware of. Protection hunting is supported by Miljöpartiet, and license hunting is something we are against.
In protective hunting, one hunts against the individuals that have caused problems. It can be repeated attacks or an uninhibited behavior. We can absolutely see that as a last resort when other solutions cannot be found.
On the other hand, the license hunt is not as specific, but it is explicitly intended to increase the acceptance of wolves. We see it as a major failure that the illegal hunting actually increases, despite a generous license hunt. We have had the largest hunt in modern times, and after it has concluded, 57 wolves, the endangered animal wolf that we have a responsibility for, have been shot in the license hunt. We also do not know which of these individuals were genetically important wolves that were felled in the hunt. There is, therefore, a big difference between protection hunting and license hunting.
I want to return to the question of illegal hunting. I hope we can reach a consensus. It is a matter of organized crime that is spreading where people take the law into their own hands and shoot animals without having a permit.
The Minister is welcome to rattle off the organizations I am a member of. I actually did not mention any organization by name, but I described their visions, which concern a zero vision for a species. The hunt opens for actively eradicating a species from the Swedish ecosystems.
I would like to hear the Minister for Rural Affairs' view on how we are to tackle the widespread illegal hunting.
Landsbygdsministern Peter Kullgren (KD)
Mr. Speaker! I have no tolerance for either poachers or illegal hunters in any context. I believe that one should follow the law. Hunters or not hunters, one must follow the laws and rules that exist. There is no talk of anything else. That is how it is.
If there are indications that someone in some hunting group is hunting wolf, we have seen that the police obviously prioritize those crimes. I have not seen the connection between license hunting and that poaching would increase, as far as it sounds like Rebecka Le Moine has evidence for.
We can once again state that over 20 years, the Swedish wolf population has increased by nearly 700 percent. If the enormously extensive poaching were occurring as described, the wolf population should not have increased as relatively sharply as it has done in recent times. Then it is perhaps the opposite, that both protection hunting and license hunting hopefully contribute to a greater acceptance of the wolf, that is, a greater acceptance that we must live side by side.
Our policy aims to create security and freedom for everyone who lives and resides in Sweden, but we also live in a time where the wolf is creeping ever closer to people's security and freedom. We must see the increasing trend that the wolf population over the last 20 years has not been affected more tangibly than before.
We are to have wolves in Sweden, and they shall be in Sweden in the long term. But the government's policy is that the population should be smaller than it is today.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.