7 ms·

Norway plans to cull more than two-thirds of its wolf population

63 points by eloff 10y ago

labster 10y ago
Who made Anders Brevik the environment minister? That population would be below the level necessary to maintain genetic diversity. At least in NZ, the Kiwis have the decency to say that they want a species eliminated outright. And before you downvote, ask yourself: Senseless violence to stop outsiders who are just trying to survive: is it really any less bad when the outsiders are animals?
- dalke 10y ago
  These wolves are not outsiders. They are native to Norway. Brevik killed Norwegians, in opposition to immigration. He did not directly kill outsiders. This is not a one-off event. The Norwegian government has done this before. From 2001, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/killing-wolves-in-norway/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/killing-wolves-in-norway/ > A Norwegian government team killed the fourth of nine wolves ordered felled in a hunt that has outraged conservationists and Swedish officials. ... > Norway ordered the nine shot after complaints from local farmers of wolves killing livestock and pets, and wandering into farms and villages in a zone designated as wolf-free. > Conservationists and Swedish officials have objected to the hunt, saying there are still so few wolves that killing nearly 10 percent of the stock is irresponsible.
  - themartorana 10y ago
    A designated "wolf-free zone" is crazy, but the wolves should have read the signs.
    - HillRat 10y ago
      You know, people get on the US for our dangerously-lax gun culture, but our concealed wolf crime rates are significantly below Northern Europe.
- spatulan 10y ago
  "And before you downvote, ask yourself: Senseless violence to stop outsiders who are just trying to survive: is it really any less bad when the outsiders are animals?" Yes, it is.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 10y ago
  > Who made Anders Brevik the environment minister? Whoa, you can't comment like that here. Even without that horrid bit, your comment is problematic for HN: we don't want overheated rants, and comments shouldn't go on about downvotes. The kernel of a civil, substantive comment is detectable in what you posted. When commenting here, please develop that part and edit out all the rest. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - labster 10y ago
    Just for the record, I commented about the downvotes before receiving any downvotes. Mainly because I knew that people have trouble understanding that outrage is a part of civilized discussion -- and that making villains out of animals and humans relies on the same logical fallacies. The only bit in the policy that you linked to is "Avoid gratuitous negativity." Is that the bit that applied here?
    - dang 10y ago
      > Is that the bit that applied here? That and "please be civil". Naming the environment minister after the country's worst mass murderer is so uncivil that I'm surprised we have to have this conversation. We're not interested in political rants on HN, so please refrain from practicing that genre on this site. > I commented about the downvotes before receiving any downvotes "Before you downvote, <rhetorical point here>" is just another variation of downvote-baiting, which the site guidelines ask you not to do. Going on about downvotes is in general a reliable marker of a bad comment. As the guidelines say, it does no good and makes boring reading.
      - labster 10y ago
        Fair enough. I don't agree with any of the logic in the first part of your reply, but it's your website. The second point is right on the nose, though.
0x07c0 10y ago
>That population would be below the level necessary to maintain genetic diversity. At least in NZ, the Kiwis have the decency to say that they want a species eliminated outright. The Norwegian wolf population is a common population with the Swedish population. The total is something like 400 wolfs. (For the record I support a robust wolf population.)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
known 10y ago
Highly deplorable :( Norway is a wealthy country; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- digi_owl 10y ago
  On paper yes, in reality no. There is a high chance of basically trashing the national economy of that is spent, depending on what effect it would have on the exchange rate etc.
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    Which is why the government of Norway is careful about how much they spend.
guard-of-terra 10y ago
It's weird that they have just 70 wolves in such a huge country. Heck, how could they even count them when I would expect them to roam freely from Finland and Murmansk and back. Wasn't Norway mostly huge wilderness actually?
- ptaipale 10y ago
  The count is indeed a very disputed number precisely because wolves roam across the borders between Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Those who suffer damages from wolves often claim that the number of wolves is actually much larger. Conservationists offer smallest numbers. I don't know if Norway is so huge. Land area is about 300 000 km, for Americans: about three-quarters of Montana.
dazzawazza 10y ago
For thousands of years humans have farmed with wolves near by. The Japanese used to use Akita to fend off wolves who are looking for the easiest, lowest risk source of calories. Seems to me that the Norwegians should ask the Sami people of the region how they lived with wolves for so long while herding reindeer and maybe look at using the Lapphund to guard their herds. Of course that may mean they would have to go out and shoot the wolves after the dogs warn them but that would have a positive effect on the wolves teaching them that they get shot if they go near the sheep. Culls don't teach the wolf packs anything. That may also mean the farmers have to live with their herds which doesn't blend well with modern life so maybe we should scrap the sheep farming and not the wolves?
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  The Sami people would have been about 100K population. Norway now is almost 100x that. + Roads, airports, farms, domesticated animals etc. I don't know specifically about the Sami, but the aboriginals in most places did not domesticate animals or have any serious agrarian practices. That said, I can't understand the logic behind this cull.
- kqr 10y ago
  > […] positive effect on the wolves teaching them that they get shot if they go near the sheep. Culls don't teach the wolf packs anything. Do canines really learn that fast? I have always imagined that it takes verbal communication of some kind to pass on complicated knowledge to the next generation, and most knowledge canines possess is evolutionarily passed on, which is a really frickin' slow process unless you intentionally breed them one way or the other.
- Tuna-Fish 10y ago
  The traditional way the Sami people manage wolves is by systematically killing all of them. The method they do this is that whenever anyone finds any prints on the snow, they encircle the area, laying a kind of "streamer" that smells like people (so wolves don't want to approach it), constantly reducing the area until the wolfpack is trapped in a small enough area that they cannot hide or escape and can be slaughtered. The reindeer herding areas of Lapland have no wolves, and have not had any for any long period during recorded history. The Sami claim the right to kill all wolves on their territory despite environmental legislation and their endangered status as part of their unalienable rights as indigenous people.
deleted 10y ago
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musha68k 10y ago
I'm disappointed of Norway, they could do so much better than that. It's strange as they usually do - remember how humanely and thoughtful they handled the terror incidents of 2011.
2trill2spill 10y ago
It's amazing how low the wolf population is in Norway, 68 wolfs in the entire country! While here in Minnesota we have nearly 2,300 wolfs across 439 wolf packs mid winter 2016[1]. But that puts them only at 3.2 wolves per 100 km2 of occupied range[2]. That must make the wolf density and total range in Norway absurdly low, why would they "cull" the wolfs when there are so few. Plus the wolfs are not really a problem here in Minnesota, a few people's pets have been killed, which sucks but thats all you really here about. [1]: http://news.dnr.state.mn.us/2016/08/22/minnesotas-wolf-population-remains-stable-2/ http://news.dnr.state.mn.us/2016/08/22/minnesotas-wolf-popul... [2]: http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/wildlife/wolves/2015/survey_wolf.pdf http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/wildlife/wolves/2015/survey_wol...
- ObeyTheGuts 10y ago
  dude norway has no forests, land is all steap mountains fragmented by fjords, only in southeast there is little suitable wolf land, nothing compared to minnesota.
  - freekh 10y ago
    I don't think you have been to Norway? A hundred years ago Norway was significant exporter of timber (and no: we didn't cut it all down). Related fun fact: the Christmas tree at traflgar square is donated by Oslo (the capital of Norway) though I think this is a token of gratitude for helping us out during WWII, it's not by coincidence that it's a tree.
  - lobster_johnson 10y ago
    38% of Norway (146,364 km2, or 56,509 square miles) is covered by forest and woodland.
    - ObeyTheGuts 10y ago
      typical nerd, taking statistics and not real life. "forest/woodland" is not same thing everywhere - http://www.borealforest.org/world/images/norway_wilderness_loss.jpg http://www.borealforest.org/world/images/norway_wilderness_l... wolf relevant forest is tiny tiny tiny
jackgavigan 10y ago
This is sad. Although the gray wolf as a species is classifed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), the Scandinavian wolf population is classified as 'Engdangered'. Instead of killing wolves, we should be trapping them and redistributing them to help ensure genetic diversity in isolated populations like Scandinavia's.
- krona 10y ago
  > we should be trapping them and redistributing them European wolves routinely travel 60-80km a day for food, and since they are very social (pack oriented) hunters, a lone wolf (forced away from the pack, for what ever reason) can travel many hundreds of kilometers per week in search of other packs, new hunting grounds etc. Meanwhile, Norway is full of hill farming in areas suitable for wolves. I can talk about the livelihoods of people and families that have been decimated by the increase in the wolf population in Sweden, but instead I will say that many of these people would rather risk a jail sentence and hunt them themselves than try to convince the government to do anything about it. > This is sad. Agreed.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    78 wolves in Norway and 340 in Sweden? If you as a farmer can't handle one wolf per 28 thousand humans, I feel bad for you, but the lives of those wolves are more important than a slight increase in farming profits. This is not wolf life vs. human life.
    - marvin 10y ago
      Farming in Norway is largely unprofitable anyway. All West Norwegian farmers I have talked to consider it an expensive hobby. Most Norwegian farming is only economically viable due to government subsidies, which have a long tradition due to famine in old history and living memory.
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        Also a cold war policy of being self-sufficient if shit hit the fan. And i think farming did better until we started pumping oil, and the export of that drove the exchange rate out of whack.
tn13 10y ago
Why not allow people to buy these wolves to be kept in private forests ?
- refurb 10y ago
  Wolves can easily get over a 6 ft fence. How would you contain them in a "private forest"?
  - icantdrive55 10y ago
    10 ft fence.
    - scarmig 10y ago
      And the wolves will pay for it!
    - marrington 10y ago
      They can easily dig under a fence. Fences can't (at reasonable expense) keep coyotes or wolves out of any large area.
- kiiski 10y ago
  I'm not familiar with the details of Norway, but the Nordic countries have so called "everyman's rights" which among other things say that owners of forests can't restrict people from roaming in their (uncultivated) land. Building a fence around your forest would most likely not be allowed.
  - tn13 10y ago
    Bad for the wolves. But I think the wolves can at least be sold to the keepers of exotic animals or even sent to other countries which might be interested. We need an international market (legal) for exotic animals.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  There are no private forests in Norway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Norway
smackay 10y ago
This decision is probably for political reasons in favour of two groups within Norway: hunters who probably want to shoot more deer and elk or perhaps moose and the Saami who get paid by the state based on the number of reindeer they have roaming the tundra in the mountains and the north of the country. Not sure if the latter is still the case. When I last visited the far north the effects of overgrazing by reindeer were starting to be severe in places. The densities of reindeer are pretty high so wolves would have a spectacularly easy time and would do very well as a result.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  It appears in the local press that sheep farmers are mainly the ones pushing for this.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I don't think the wolf has ever been a problem up north. Nah, this is a local issue in the counties near Oslo. The decision is not even made centrally, but left to the counties. You can bet your behind that they were leaned on heavily by local farmers.
MindTooth 10y ago
Not our proudest moment.. Regarding lost life stocks, this can be solved by having a herdsman watching over the life stock. But no one wants to work as such, and therefore they kill the wolfs instead. (My grandfather was a herdsman.)
sandworm101 10y ago
How many sheep do these few dozen wolves kill? How much do sheep cost? How much does Norway spend on promoting tourism? This isn't about the business of raising livestock. This is an ideological hunt. This is killing wolves to make wolves dead. When in a few years they come knocking on Canada's door for new wolves, as America once did for Yellowstone, I hope we charge them millions.
clumsysmurf 10y ago
Sounds like a really bad idea "A recent study in the journal Science, "Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth," examines how the near disappearance of upper levels of the food chain—big cats, wolves, bison and great whales—has altered ecosystems around the world." https://www.fastcoexist.com/1678282/humanitys-biggest-impact-may-be-the-extinction-of-predators https://www.fastcoexist.com/1678282/humanitys-biggest-impact... And more recently "... pups of predators in socially disrupted packs are more likely to prey on livestock." http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2016-09-15/endangered-species-and-wildlife/study-killing-wolves-may-not-protect-livestock/a54029-1 http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2016-09-15/endangered-speci...
- deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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zunk 10y ago
https://g.co/kgs/6tfjQu https://g.co/kgs/6tfjQu A Little wolf-pro activism from Follow Him to the End of the Desert. Not Norwegian, but Swedes.
vsviridov 10y ago
Damn, I imagined hordes of wolves roaming about, but then I open an article and learn that there's only 68.
maxander 10y ago
There are ~200k sheep in Norway, about 1mil livestock total [1] and less than 100 wolves. Unless these wolves have devoted themselves totally to taking down sheep, the idea that they're a real issue is preposterous. [1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Figure_5_Livestock_by_main_types_NO_2000_and_2010.PNG http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

63 points by eloff 10y ago

Who made Anders Brevik the environment minister? That population would be below the level necessary to maintain genetic diversity. At least in NZ, the Kiwis have the decency to say that they want a species eliminated outright. And before you downvote, ask yourself: Senseless violence to stop outsiders who are just trying to survive: is it really any less bad when the outsiders are animals?

dalke 10y ago
These wolves are not outsiders. They are native to Norway. Brevik killed Norwegians, in opposition to immigration. He did not directly kill outsiders. This is not a one-off event. The Norwegian government has done this before. From 2001, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/killing-wolves-in-norway/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/killing-wolves-in-norway/ > A Norwegian government team killed the fourth of nine wolves ordered felled in a hunt that has outraged conservationists and Swedish officials. ... > Norway ordered the nine shot after complaints from local farmers of wolves killing livestock and pets, and wandering into farms and villages in a zone designated as wolf-free. > Conservationists and Swedish officials have objected to the hunt, saying there are still so few wolves that killing nearly 10 percent of the stock is irresponsible.
- themartorana 10y ago
  A designated "wolf-free zone" is crazy, but the wolves should have read the signs.
  - HillRat 10y ago
    You know, people get on the US for our dangerously-lax gun culture, but our concealed wolf crime rates are significantly below Northern Europe.
spatulan 10y ago
"And before you downvote, ask yourself: Senseless violence to stop outsiders who are just trying to survive: is it really any less bad when the outsiders are animals?" Yes, it is.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dang 10y ago
> Who made Anders Brevik the environment minister? Whoa, you can't comment like that here. Even without that horrid bit, your comment is problematic for HN: we don't want overheated rants, and comments shouldn't go on about downvotes. The kernel of a civil, substantive comment is detectable in what you posted. When commenting here, please develop that part and edit out all the rest. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- labster 10y ago
  Just for the record, I commented about the downvotes before receiving any downvotes. Mainly because I knew that people have trouble understanding that outrage is a part of civilized discussion -- and that making villains out of animals and humans relies on the same logical fallacies. The only bit in the policy that you linked to is "Avoid gratuitous negativity." Is that the bit that applied here?
  - dang 10y ago
    > Is that the bit that applied here? That and "please be civil". Naming the environment minister after the country's worst mass murderer is so uncivil that I'm surprised we have to have this conversation. We're not interested in political rants on HN, so please refrain from practicing that genre on this site. > I commented about the downvotes before receiving any downvotes "Before you downvote, <rhetorical point here>" is just another variation of downvote-baiting, which the site guidelines ask you not to do. Going on about downvotes is in general a reliable marker of a bad comment. As the guidelines say, it does no good and makes boring reading.
    - labster 10y ago
      Fair enough. I don't agree with any of the logic in the first part of your reply, but it's your website. The second point is right on the nose, though.

0x07c0 10y ago

>That population would be below the level necessary to maintain genetic diversity. At least in NZ, the Kiwis have the decency to say that they want a species eliminated outright. The Norwegian wolf population is a common population with the Swedish population. The total is something like 400 wolfs. (For the record I support a robust wolf population.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

known 10y ago

Highly deplorable :( Norway is a wealthy country; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
digi_owl 10y ago
On paper yes, in reality no. There is a high chance of basically trashing the national economy of that is spent, depending on what effect it would have on the exchange rate etc.
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  Which is why the government of Norway is careful about how much they spend.

guard-of-terra 10y ago

It's weird that they have just 70 wolves in such a huge country. Heck, how could they even count them when I would expect them to roam freely from Finland and Murmansk and back. Wasn't Norway mostly huge wilderness actually?

ptaipale 10y ago
The count is indeed a very disputed number precisely because wolves roam across the borders between Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Those who suffer damages from wolves often claim that the number of wolves is actually much larger. Conservationists offer smallest numbers. I don't know if Norway is so huge. Land area is about 300 000 km, for Americans: about three-quarters of Montana.

dazzawazza 10y ago

For thousands of years humans have farmed with wolves near by. The Japanese used to use Akita to fend off wolves who are looking for the easiest, lowest risk source of calories. Seems to me that the Norwegians should ask the Sami people of the region how they lived with wolves for so long while herding reindeer and maybe look at using the Lapphund to guard their herds. Of course that may mean they would have to go out and shoot the wolves after the dogs warn them but that would have a positive effect on the wolves teaching them that they get shot if they go near the sheep. Culls don't teach the wolf packs anything. That may also mean the farmers have to live with their herds which doesn't blend well with modern life so maybe we should scrap the sheep farming and not the wolves?

jomamaxx 10y ago
The Sami people would have been about 100K population. Norway now is almost 100x that. + Roads, airports, farms, domesticated animals etc. I don't know specifically about the Sami, but the aboriginals in most places did not domesticate animals or have any serious agrarian practices. That said, I can't understand the logic behind this cull.
kqr 10y ago
> […] positive effect on the wolves teaching them that they get shot if they go near the sheep. Culls don't teach the wolf packs anything. Do canines really learn that fast? I have always imagined that it takes verbal communication of some kind to pass on complicated knowledge to the next generation, and most knowledge canines possess is evolutionarily passed on, which is a really frickin' slow process unless you intentionally breed them one way or the other.
Tuna-Fish 10y ago
The traditional way the Sami people manage wolves is by systematically killing all of them. The method they do this is that whenever anyone finds any prints on the snow, they encircle the area, laying a kind of "streamer" that smells like people (so wolves don't want to approach it), constantly reducing the area until the wolfpack is trapped in a small enough area that they cannot hide or escape and can be slaughtered. The reindeer herding areas of Lapland have no wolves, and have not had any for any long period during recorded history. The Sami claim the right to kill all wolves on their territory despite environmental legislation and their endangered status as part of their unalienable rights as indigenous people.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

musha68k 10y ago

I'm disappointed of Norway, they could do so much better than that. It's strange as they usually do - remember how humanely and thoughtful they handled the terror incidents of 2011.

2trill2spill 10y ago

It's amazing how low the wolf population is in Norway, 68 wolfs in the entire country! While here in Minnesota we have nearly 2,300 wolfs across 439 wolf packs mid winter 2016[1]. But that puts them only at 3.2 wolves per 100 km2 of occupied range[2]. That must make the wolf density and total range in Norway absurdly low, why would they "cull" the wolfs when there are so few. Plus the wolfs are not really a problem here in Minnesota, a few people's pets have been killed, which sucks but thats all you really here about. [1]: http://news.dnr.state.mn.us/2016/08/22/minnesotas-wolf-population-remains-stable-2/ http://news.dnr.state.mn.us/2016/08/22/minnesotas-wolf-popul... [2]: http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/wildlife/wolves/2015/survey_wolf.pdf http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/wildlife/wolves/2015/survey_wol...

ObeyTheGuts 10y ago
dude norway has no forests, land is all steap mountains fragmented by fjords, only in southeast there is little suitable wolf land, nothing compared to minnesota.
- freekh 10y ago
  I don't think you have been to Norway? A hundred years ago Norway was significant exporter of timber (and no: we didn't cut it all down). Related fun fact: the Christmas tree at traflgar square is donated by Oslo (the capital of Norway) though I think this is a token of gratitude for helping us out during WWII, it's not by coincidence that it's a tree.
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  38% of Norway (146,364 km2, or 56,509 square miles) is covered by forest and woodland.
  - ObeyTheGuts 10y ago
    typical nerd, taking statistics and not real life. "forest/woodland" is not same thing everywhere - http://www.borealforest.org/world/images/norway_wilderness_loss.jpg http://www.borealforest.org/world/images/norway_wilderness_l... wolf relevant forest is tiny tiny tiny

jackgavigan 10y ago

This is sad. Although the gray wolf as a species is classifed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), the Scandinavian wolf population is classified as 'Engdangered'. Instead of killing wolves, we should be trapping them and redistributing them to help ensure genetic diversity in isolated populations like Scandinavia's.

krona 10y ago
> we should be trapping them and redistributing them European wolves routinely travel 60-80km a day for food, and since they are very social (pack oriented) hunters, a lone wolf (forced away from the pack, for what ever reason) can travel many hundreds of kilometers per week in search of other packs, new hunting grounds etc. Meanwhile, Norway is full of hill farming in areas suitable for wolves. I can talk about the livelihoods of people and families that have been decimated by the increase in the wolf population in Sweden, but instead I will say that many of these people would rather risk a jail sentence and hunt them themselves than try to convince the government to do anything about it. > This is sad. Agreed.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  78 wolves in Norway and 340 in Sweden? If you as a farmer can't handle one wolf per 28 thousand humans, I feel bad for you, but the lives of those wolves are more important than a slight increase in farming profits. This is not wolf life vs. human life.
  - marvin 10y ago
    Farming in Norway is largely unprofitable anyway. All West Norwegian farmers I have talked to consider it an expensive hobby. Most Norwegian farming is only economically viable due to government subsidies, which have a long tradition due to famine in old history and living memory.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Also a cold war policy of being self-sufficient if shit hit the fan. And i think farming did better until we started pumping oil, and the export of that drove the exchange rate out of whack.

tn13 10y ago

Why not allow people to buy these wolves to be kept in private forests ?

refurb 10y ago
Wolves can easily get over a 6 ft fence. How would you contain them in a "private forest"?
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  10 ft fence.
  - scarmig 10y ago
    And the wolves will pay for it!
  - marrington 10y ago
    They can easily dig under a fence. Fences can't (at reasonable expense) keep coyotes or wolves out of any large area.
kiiski 10y ago
I'm not familiar with the details of Norway, but the Nordic countries have so called "everyman's rights" which among other things say that owners of forests can't restrict people from roaming in their (uncultivated) land. Building a fence around your forest would most likely not be allowed.
- tn13 10y ago
  Bad for the wolves. But I think the wolves can at least be sold to the keepers of exotic animals or even sent to other countries which might be interested. We need an international market (legal) for exotic animals.
ptaipale 10y ago
There are no private forests in Norway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Norway

smackay 10y ago

This decision is probably for political reasons in favour of two groups within Norway: hunters who probably want to shoot more deer and elk or perhaps moose and the Saami who get paid by the state based on the number of reindeer they have roaming the tundra in the mountains and the north of the country. Not sure if the latter is still the case. When I last visited the far north the effects of overgrazing by reindeer were starting to be severe in places. The densities of reindeer are pretty high so wolves would have a spectacularly easy time and would do very well as a result.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
It appears in the local press that sheep farmers are mainly the ones pushing for this.
digi_owl 10y ago
I don't think the wolf has ever been a problem up north. Nah, this is a local issue in the counties near Oslo. The decision is not even made centrally, but left to the counties. You can bet your behind that they were leaned on heavily by local farmers.

MindTooth 10y ago

Not our proudest moment.. Regarding lost life stocks, this can be solved by having a herdsman watching over the life stock. But no one wants to work as such, and therefore they kill the wolfs instead. (My grandfather was a herdsman.)

sandworm101 10y ago

How many sheep do these few dozen wolves kill? How much do sheep cost? How much does Norway spend on promoting tourism? This isn't about the business of raising livestock. This is an ideological hunt. This is killing wolves to make wolves dead. When in a few years they come knocking on Canada's door for new wolves, as America once did for Yellowstone, I hope we charge them millions.

clumsysmurf 10y ago

Sounds like a really bad idea "A recent study in the journal Science, "Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth," examines how the near disappearance of upper levels of the food chain—big cats, wolves, bison and great whales—has altered ecosystems around the world." https://www.fastcoexist.com/1678282/humanitys-biggest-impact-may-be-the-extinction-of-predators https://www.fastcoexist.com/1678282/humanitys-biggest-impact... And more recently "... pups of predators in socially disrupted packs are more likely to prey on livestock." http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2016-09-15/endangered-species-and-wildlife/study-killing-wolves-may-not-protect-livestock/a54029-1 http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2016-09-15/endangered-speci...

deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

zunk 10y ago

https://g.co/kgs/6tfjQu https://g.co/kgs/6tfjQu A Little wolf-pro activism from Follow Him to the End of the Desert. Not Norwegian, but Swedes.

vsviridov 10y ago

Damn, I imagined hordes of wolves roaming about, but then I open an article and learn that there's only 68.

maxander 10y ago

There are ~200k sheep in Norway, about 1mil livestock total [1] and less than 100 wolves. Unless these wolves have devoted themselves totally to taking down sheep, the idea that they're a real issue is preposterous. [1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Figure_5_Livestock_by_main_types_NO_2000_and_2010.PNG http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...