Sweden Kicks off Bear Hunting Season With Almost 500 Licenses To Cull the Carnivore Beasts

It may well be that, in the near future, 2024 may be remembered by the troubled interactions between men and bears, both in Europe and North America.

Now, in Sweden, Brown bear hunting season started Wednesday, with 486 licenses to ‘cull.

As one would expect, conservationists oppose he measure, and warn that this move could result in drop of as much as 20% in the country’s predator population.

Associated Press reported:

“’Bear hunting is very much about pure trophy hunt’, Magnus Orrebrant of the Swedish Carnivore Association — a non-profit and independent advocacy group — told The Associated Press. ‘Wildlife management in Sweden is about killing animals instead of preserving them’, he added.

In June, when the figure for this year’s bear hunting was released, Jonas Kindberg of a Swedish-Norwegian bear preservation research program said that ‘if you want the population to remain stable at around the 2,400 animals as we estimate today, you can only shoot about 250 bears annually’.”

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The hunt can have major consequences and become critical for the bear population, Kindberg warned.

The number of Swedish bears has dropped in recent years,  due to the effect of licensed hunting.

Last year, 649 licenses to cull were emitted, COMPARED TO 622 in 2022 and 501 in 2021.

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“Every five years, an estimate is made of how many bears there are in Sweden. The previous estimated count was done in 2017 which showed there were about 2,900 bears at that time, according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, a government body.”

Carnivoran mammals increased in number slightly between 2018 and 2020, and then decreased, the agency said.

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“Sweden is covered by 70% of forest and the seven counties inhabited by bears issue a limited number of licenses to cull them each year. The hunting season for the carnivoran mammals in 2024 ends at the latest on Oct. 15. The counties are chiefly located in central and northern Sweden.

[…] Besides the hunting licenses, bears can also be killed in self-defense when people are threatened, and these are not counted as part of the hunting licenses.”

Bears are common in the Scandinavian peninsula.

Sweden also shares border with Norway where bear hunting is forbidden.

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