Response to interpellation 2025/26:560 on confidence in hunting seasons
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns the confidence in hunting seasons and the government's work with wildlife management. KD argues that current hunting seasons apply until new decisions are made 1 2. KD emphasizes that Naturvårdsverket is working on a proposal based on biological and legal frameworks, where management should be decentralized and knowledge-based 1 3. KD wants a Fennoscandian wolf management and an MVP of 100 in Sweden 4. S criticizes the government's work and argues that Naturvårdsverket's proposal does not meet the hunters' demands 5. S emphasizes the importance of ethical aspects and wants clarity in mountain hunting and double registration in Sami territory 6 7. S suggests that the number of wolves can vary between 170 and 270 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! Isak From has asked me if I intend to take any initiatives to extend the current hunting seasons or do something else to maintain confidence in the hunting seasons.
Initially, I want to clarify that the current hunting seasons apply until something else has been decided.
The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency began the work on the review of hunting seasons in 2024 and, prior to the work with the review, has developed guidelines for the design of hunting seasons. The guidelines concern, among other things, biological frameworks, such as a species' mating and breeding period. They also include legal frameworks, including EU directives and international agreements that Sweden has committed to.
For the work, Naturvårdsverket has a preparation group with representatives from the county administrative boards, Skogsstyrelsen, Birdlife Sverige, Jägarnas Riksförbund, Lantbrukarnas Riksförbund, Skogsindustrierna, Svenska Jägareförbundet and Naturskyddsföreningen. Naturvårdsverket referred a preliminary proposal between December 15, 2025 and February 16 this year.
The Government received the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's final proposal on 12 June 2026, and that proposal is now being prepared in the Government Offices.
Isak From (S)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Minister for Rural Affairs, for the response to the interpellation! We will return to that.
Mr. Speaker! The Tidö parties' work on hunting issues has met with great criticism – the cancelled wolf hunt, appealed decisions, red-listed moose, and the postponement of the mountain hunting issue are just a few parts. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's hunting period process and the agency's preliminary proposal have also met very strong criticism and do not at all correspond to the demands that, for example, the Swedish Kennel Club, or for that matter the Hunters' Association, have set.
Mr. Speaker! The Minister for Rural Affairs says in his response that the old hunting times apply as long as no new ones are introduced, and that is good.
The Government and the Minister for Rural Affairs also say that the issue of hunting seasons is being prepared in the Government Offices. In a previous debate, we heard from another minister in the Tidö Government that the preparation of an issue in the Government Offices can result in very many different parts. Sometimes it becomes a bill, and sometimes it becomes nothing at all.
Right now, it is the hunters out there who are asking what it will be like in the future. I posted a post on Instagram about this debate and about how the hunters want answers. I then received answers also from people who are not hunters but perhaps outdoor enthusiasts who want to pick berries and mushrooms and go skiing in the mountains in March. They also very much want to know what the hunting seasons will be. When will the hunters be out?
As long as a new decision has not been made, the old hunting seasons still apply, as stated, and I can feel secure with that. What I do not feel quite secure about are the double signals coming from the Tidö parties. It emerged during the hunting debate at Västgård in Jämtland that there is a ready-made proposal at the Government Offices that the Sverigedemokraterna had not been made aware of, and that they would very much like to know what the proposal entails before they approve it.
My question to Peter Kullgren here is therefore: Is there a finished proposal that is now being negotiated with the other Tidö parties?
Landsbygdsministern Peter Kullgren (KD)
Mr. Speaker! The government's work with hunting may have drawn criticism in some parts. The halted wolf hunt is an issue that has been discussed extensively, but whether we can be blamed for it or not, I will leave unsaid. It was a court that stopped the wolf hunt, not the government.
However, we in the government have done as much as we can so that Sweden can have a wolf hunt and a smaller population. Obviously, we need to do even more, and that is what we are in the process of doing. The administrative measures that are planned and that the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has said are needed are currently being put in place.
I advocate for a knowledge-based and locally anchored wildlife management where those affected are, of course, given the opportunity to have an influence. The starting point for the Government and me is that the operational wildlife management shall be and remain decentralized.
I believe it is important to remind how it was done when hunting seasons were established in the past. At that time, there was a hunting season preparation under the auspices of the Swedish Hunters' Association with representatives for hunters and nature conservation interests. The preparation submitted a proposal to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency regarding changed hunting seasons, and after a referral process, the agency submitted a proposal to the government.
The management of hunting seasons was discontinued in 2000, on the Hunter's Association's own initiative. Since it is the government that makes decisions regarding hunting seasons – and that is also the answer to the question of whether this needs to be prepared with more parties or not, that is to say that it is the government that decides and not the Riksdag or other parties – the government subsequently received a number of individual cases annually with petitions for changes regarding hunting seasons. Therefore, we have this order of things, and on the initiative and mandate of previous governments, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency was given the assignment.
One can, of course, always tweak all models. When proposals are submitted, there will naturally always be discussion, and even previous governments have made changes to proposals that have come from the agency.
My ambition is that we should get this in place as soon as possible so that there are no uncertainties, but regardless of whether we make a decision now before the election – which I really hope we will be able to do – they will not enter into force immediately. Instead, they will apply to the next hunting year. Any concerned mushroom and berry pickers, whom I believe the member spoke about, can therefore know for certain that the current hunting times will apply until June, when the next hunting year begins.
The system that the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency presented is thus the basis for the hunting season process we have, and fundamental here is that the management shall be adaptive but also transparent and clear. Now we have a system where the hunting seasons are reviewed with some periodicity. It is simply a system with more order than that which applied before this was introduced.
Isak From (S)
Mr. Speaker! Yes, the government prepares, and the government owns the issue. That is why I, as a member of Parliament, have had the opportunity to submit this interpellation; it is the government that decides – and that chooses when to decide.
I think it is important to also include the ethical aspects. Hunting in Sweden has very high acceptance, which is based on the fact that very many – actually in all of Sweden – have a connection to hunting in different ways. Either you hunt yourself or someone in the family does, or you also get to take part in the hunting by eating moose meat or something else. Sweden's acceptance of hunting is actually unique in the world, and I think we must be very careful with it.
That is why there are some parts in the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's proposal that have been debated. This concerns winter hunting of moose and calf hunting during the spring season. One part that could be good and that one perhaps should even look at is when one can release the dog for dog training. There has been a major discussion about whether it is good or bad to move towards a common date.
I thought that the government would have reached a decision and that Peter Kullgren could say today that the decision had been reached because one thinks it will turn out very well. The rumor also went that something was in the works. Some perhaps thought that it was a question of appointing a new mountain hunting inquiry, but apparently that was not the case. Despite a promise to the contrary, it seems that the question has stalled in the Government Offices. The Minister for Rural Affairs can comment on this if he wishes. A quite considerable amount of time has passed since the current government laid down the previous inquiry.
It turned out that it was rather a new level for the number of wolves that the government presented. I can understand that – we Social Democrats have thought it has been very difficult to have a completely fixed figure. We think the number can be somewhere between 170 and 270; that is the Social Democratic position. The number can vary between years – some year it can be 170, and another year it can be a few more.
I think the government's approach to reaching an agreement with the countries on the Scandinavian peninsula, especially Norway, is good. I wish you luck with this. The Minister for Rural Affairs is welcome to say something about whether initiatives have been taken together with Norway. I know that the Social Democratic government and the then Rural Affairs Minister Sven-Erik Bucht tried to reach an agreement with Erna Solberg's government. It didn't work – then it stopped. Has Peter Kullgren's and Ulf Kristersson's government asked if Norway wants to agree on a common level? No one would be happier than we Social Democrats if a common wolf management could be reached together with Sweden's western neighbor.
Landsbygdsministern Peter Kullgren (KD)
Madam Speaker! This interpellation is about hunting seasons, so I will stick to that.
Isak From knows what we, and I, have communicated previously. The ambition is to appoint a new – equivalent – land use investigation before the election. That ambition remains; I hope that we will be able to do so.
It is important to remember that hunting seasons are not decided politically day by day, but there are certain lead times so that they have time to settle. I think we have a good order with the hunting season processes. We have an orderly form.
We are now precisely in the preparation stage. The final proposal from Naturvårdsverket, with all the comments, arrived quite close to the summer. Of course, we have gone through the comments. Given that the member referred to various debates outside of this chamber, he should have seen what most parties say and think about, for example, the hunting of moose calves, which has been discussed a lot. There is broad agreement and consensus here. In any case, many concerns have been raised regarding that part.
From the government's side, we bring with us all viewpoints from nature interests, hunting interests, forestry interests, and farming interests in the work to be able to make a decision that is as well-founded as possible, which as many as possible can stand behind.
We would very much like to see a Fennoscandian wolf management. We consider the population in Sweden, Norway, and Finland as a single population. We have also tasked the authorities to look into whether it is possible – they have been tasked to initiate those types of dialogues.
Of course, I have mentioned this. Norway has replaced the ministers responsible for my issues quite many times, so I actually do not remember if I have raised this question with the latest minister. I do, however, know for certain that I did so with previous ministers. The same applies to the Finnish side. There is an interest, but the initial discussions in such a matter need to take place at a technical level – at an official level.
Norway is not an EU country, which makes it a special discussion. It is an aspect that we need to take into account, but the wolf doesn't care whether Norway is in the EU or not. The Norwegian wolf considers itself to belong to the same tribe as the Swedish one.
The goal is that we shall achieve this and that we shall be able to have an MVP of 100 at that level in Sweden.
Isak From (S)
Madam Speaker! This will be my final contribution for this parliamentary term.
Time for hunting means that the hunting decisions which the county administrative boards hopefully make regarding the allocation of wolves during the autumn can be implemented, and that these hold up legally and are not appealed and stopped. Our hope is that the government manages to handle this and that the process holds. There are many who hunt – and who want to hunt – in the mountains and who look forward to being able to do so in the coming year. Therefore, progress needs to be made in the mountain hunting issue.
Another part, which concerns hunting seasons but is not included in the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's proposal, is the part concerning double registration in connection with the moose hunt in Sami territory. This is undiscussed, and we need to come up with a solution here. The Renmark Committee did not even have time to look at this at all.
I want to conclude by wishing the Minister for Rural Affairs a shitty hunt if he goes out into the forest. I also wish a moderate amount of good luck in the election. We will see what happens here after September 13. I also wish the Speaker and the Speaker's Office a continued pleasant summer.
Landsbygdsministern Peter Kullgren (KD)
Madam Speaker! It is important to have a good dialogue with the organizations when the hunting seasons are set. I share the view that the hunting seasons must have high legitimacy among the country's hunters. I do not believe that the solution is to politicize the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's work more. The solution instead is that the agency has a broad knowledge base, listens to the referral bodies, and makes well-founded decisions or presents proposals that have the potential to hold over time.
The hunters' trust in wildlife management is absolutely crucial. Therefore, decisions should be well-reasoned, predictable and long-term.
As I said initially: Current hunting seasons apply until something else has been decided, and it is the government that makes decisions when it comes to new hunting seasons.
I suppose I must say the same to Isak From as he said to me: Good luck! We will surely see each other in many contexts during the coming weeks.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.