Sweden allows hunting of 20% of its brown bears

The high number of permits issued worries environmentalists.

Hunting, a threat to the survival of the brown bear in Sweden? The country’s authorities have issued nearly 490 hunting permits for the new hunting season, or 20% of the total population, explains the British daily The GuardianIf the quotas are met, this would bring the number of bears in Sweden to around 2,000, a drop of almost 40% since 2008.

As the American channel ABC News points out, an estimate of the number of brown bears present on Swedish territory is carried out regularly by a government body. The last study dates from 2017 and estimates the total population at 2,900. A species threatened with extinction in the 1930s, theSweden has radically changed its policy to allow the species to thrive. But this season, the high number of permits issued has alarmed conservationists.

In Sweden, “Bear hunting is above all a trophy hunt”reacts Magnus Orrebrant, chairman of the Swedish Carnivore Association, told the AP news agency that he regrets the current policy of managing wildlife populations in the Nordic country, which is more “to kill animals rather than protect them”. Some hunters have also expressed concern about the decline in bear numbers. “Some members of the hunting community are concerned that too many bears are being killed,” the Guardian Anders Nilsson, a hunter from northern Sweden.

Brown bears, lynx and wolverines, although also classified as threatened, have also been subject to hunting quotas for years. In February 2023, A wolf hunt, the largest in recent history, has sparked controversy. This year, Sweden allowed hunters to kill 75 wolves, more than double the number the previous season, out of a population estimated at 460 by the environmental authority. An unprecedented level since wolf hunting was reintroduced in 2010 in the kingdom, as a result of the return of the canine, exterminated to near-extinction in the 20th century.