Save the Whales, but What about the Wolves? The
international community should leave the whalers alone and turn its
attention to the scandal of Norway's persecution of wolves
With Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd shouting so loudly about the
whales, the world failed to notice Norway’s real environmental crime.
Uniquely among first-world nations, it is about to exterminate all of
its major predator species. First to go will be the wolf.
The wolf is on the Norwegian red list of endangered species. At the start of each hunting season there are roughly 50 wolves in Norway. By the end there are barely 20. So far, migration from Sweden has prevented the complete collapse of the species. But the wolf “contributes nothing”, the farmers say, and they want it gone for good.
Compare this to the minke whale. Norway takes roughly 600 animals a year from a whale population of at least 125,000. But there’s no money in killing whales any more and the industry is dying out. We may not like whaling, but the whales are thriving. It’s a different story with the wolf.
The Norwegian government is required by international law to protect the wolf. It acknowledges that the species is critically endangered, yet promotes a strategy that hobbles its recovery, keeping numbers so artificially low that it is heavily inbred and struggles to reproduce. Three breeding pairs are “permitted”. That is all. Now even that level of protection is under threat.
The new rightwing coalition is not going to stand in the farmers’ way: the populist Progress Party recently said it has no objection to the eradication of the wolf. Increasing numbers are signing up to wolf-hunting courses.
The wolf has few friends. Arctic reindeer herders shoot them on sight. In the south, poachers kill with impunity. Prosecutions are rare. Once the wolf has gone, the farmers will turn their attention to the bear, the wolverine, and the lynx.
The farmers’ claims go unchallenged: no one wants to say they are lying, but anyone can tell the numbers don’t stack up. In 2012, sheep farmers received compensation for 26,512 sheep and lambs “killed by predators”, yet only 1,809 carcasses were produced. Of a total of 120,000 sheep that go missing each year, only 1.5% can be shown to have suffered predation.
The wolf was eradicated for the first time in Scandinavia in the 1960s. A few wolves from the Finno-Russian stock migrated westwards and repopulated Sweden and Norway. The Centre Party, which represents the interests of the farmers and wishes to see the wolf exterminated, argues that wolves in Norway are therefore not Norwegian, and “are not welcome in Norwegian nature.” The irony of this seems to escape them.
There is no purebred “Norwegian wolf”; there never was. Because they range over huge areas, and interbreed freely, wolf genes are widely spread. But this time, when the wolf is eradicated, it won’t be allowed to return.
Norwegian farmers claim that only they understand the danger the wolf poses to people. “You wouldn’t like it,” they say, “if they were coming up to your house.” Yet encounters are rare, and you are far more likely to be killed by a tick or a bee.
The press is full of stories of people “lucky to be alive” after encountering wolves. In every such narrative the wolf runs away; the lucky survivor recounts how they switched on their radio, or waved their arms, or shouted. They emerged, in other words, victorious. They escaped with their life. The last Norwegian to be killed by a wolf died in 1800.
We rightly fear polar bears because they kill human beings on a regular basis, yet no one is suggesting that Norway eradicate the polar bear from Svalbard. That would provoke an immediate and very direct response: the world community would shun Norway.
In other countries wolves and farmers co-exist happily. Italy manages it; Norway could too. Yet thanks to special interest groups and the Norwegian state, the wolf is about to be persecuted to extinction so that farmers can leave their flocks unattended, and so that superstitious people can sleep comfortably in their beds.
The international community should leave the whalers alone and turn its attention to the scandal of Norwegian farming. Time is running out for the wolf.
• Ben McPherson is a columnist for Aftenposten, where a version of this article was first published
source
The wolf is on the Norwegian red list of endangered species. At the start of each hunting season there are roughly 50 wolves in Norway. By the end there are barely 20. So far, migration from Sweden has prevented the complete collapse of the species. But the wolf “contributes nothing”, the farmers say, and they want it gone for good.
Compare this to the minke whale. Norway takes roughly 600 animals a year from a whale population of at least 125,000. But there’s no money in killing whales any more and the industry is dying out. We may not like whaling, but the whales are thriving. It’s a different story with the wolf.
The Norwegian government is required by international law to protect the wolf. It acknowledges that the species is critically endangered, yet promotes a strategy that hobbles its recovery, keeping numbers so artificially low that it is heavily inbred and struggles to reproduce. Three breeding pairs are “permitted”. That is all. Now even that level of protection is under threat.
The new rightwing coalition is not going to stand in the farmers’ way: the populist Progress Party recently said it has no objection to the eradication of the wolf. Increasing numbers are signing up to wolf-hunting courses.
The wolf has few friends. Arctic reindeer herders shoot them on sight. In the south, poachers kill with impunity. Prosecutions are rare. Once the wolf has gone, the farmers will turn their attention to the bear, the wolverine, and the lynx.
The farmers’ claims go unchallenged: no one wants to say they are lying, but anyone can tell the numbers don’t stack up. In 2012, sheep farmers received compensation for 26,512 sheep and lambs “killed by predators”, yet only 1,809 carcasses were produced. Of a total of 120,000 sheep that go missing each year, only 1.5% can be shown to have suffered predation.
The wolf was eradicated for the first time in Scandinavia in the 1960s. A few wolves from the Finno-Russian stock migrated westwards and repopulated Sweden and Norway. The Centre Party, which represents the interests of the farmers and wishes to see the wolf exterminated, argues that wolves in Norway are therefore not Norwegian, and “are not welcome in Norwegian nature.” The irony of this seems to escape them.
There is no purebred “Norwegian wolf”; there never was. Because they range over huge areas, and interbreed freely, wolf genes are widely spread. But this time, when the wolf is eradicated, it won’t be allowed to return.
Norwegian farmers claim that only they understand the danger the wolf poses to people. “You wouldn’t like it,” they say, “if they were coming up to your house.” Yet encounters are rare, and you are far more likely to be killed by a tick or a bee.
The press is full of stories of people “lucky to be alive” after encountering wolves. In every such narrative the wolf runs away; the lucky survivor recounts how they switched on their radio, or waved their arms, or shouted. They emerged, in other words, victorious. They escaped with their life. The last Norwegian to be killed by a wolf died in 1800.
We rightly fear polar bears because they kill human beings on a regular basis, yet no one is suggesting that Norway eradicate the polar bear from Svalbard. That would provoke an immediate and very direct response: the world community would shun Norway.
In other countries wolves and farmers co-exist happily. Italy manages it; Norway could too. Yet thanks to special interest groups and the Norwegian state, the wolf is about to be persecuted to extinction so that farmers can leave their flocks unattended, and so that superstitious people can sleep comfortably in their beds.
The international community should leave the whalers alone and turn its attention to the scandal of Norwegian farming. Time is running out for the wolf.
• Ben McPherson is a columnist for Aftenposten, where a version of this article was first published
source
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