Wether to reduce the population or allow it to grow.
The main concerns are farming and loss of sheep.
Thing is... In Norway there is a tradition to let sheep run free in the forests in the summer to fatten up. in older times, they used to have herders and milkmaids looking after the animals but theat went out of fashion at the same time as the demands to pay the herders came into fashion...
I know lots of youngsters who would really benefit from a wild and wonderful summer of herding...But my point is not people and payment for sitting on your arse, chewing straws and babysitting sheep...
The point is.
The politicians can not see beyond the money.
They do not realize what a beautiful creature the wild wolf is.
About 15 years ago I became passionate about wild carnivores when the norwegian army brought out the BIG guns in the form of a helicopter to kill a pregnant wolf.
She was the last of her pack and that pack was the last actual pack in Norway.
Now there are only a few lonely wolves.
The packs are no more.
There is talk about hybrids and how the wolves in Norway are "Hybrids" being as they are imported or migrated siberian or balkan wolves rather than Native scandinavian wolves...
And therefore we can kill wolves coz they are not native to norway...
BULLSHIT!
Realitycheck Mr. Politician dude...
If the Norwegian government had allowed the Norwegian Canis Lupus to live it would not be so rare and the siberian ones wouldn't find a home here...
The few pure scandinavian wolves left here are inbred and lonely.
And there is no real genetic difference in the scandinavian wolf and the siberian or baltic variety.
It's a bit like comparing Norwegian and Russian human DNA... The Russian people are NOT a different breed just because they come from Russia....
Ok so they have predominantly brown eyes and we have predominantly blue, but interbreeding won't make us any less human...
The politicians also blame the Lynx, Bear and Wolverine for the loss of sheep and have in the past allowed for winterculling of wolverines.
This means digging into the winter den of a wolverine mother and killing her small ones while the mother hibernates.
How is that even protecting wildlife?
It's a bit like throwing a baby boy in prison because he *might* rape a woman when he's a grown man...
and bears...
Largely vegetarian but won't say no thanks to a lovely lamb dinner if it walks into his territory.
who can blame him?
it all upsets me a bit.
They have been here since before the last Iceage, and without human egotism and complete lack of regard for anything but our own gain. They are built to hunt and built to last.
Nature needs the carnivores.
Nature does not need humans.
Our dear planet would probably do quite well without us here, but instead, we are here and we are destroying pretty much every wonderful thing we come across...
To be considered a "solid and sustainable" population, a species must count a minimum of 1000-2000 individuals.
In Norway we have 40-50 wolves, 330 bears, 245 wolverines and 385 lynx.
We have a LOT of forest. In fact only 20-30% of our country is farmable or habitable for human activity.
it might go without saying that we have enough room for the wild things too...
