According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Finland, the fear of wolves will be considered as a base of hunting during the next two hunting seasons 2016-2018. ”Licensed hunting is the most important way to decrease illegal killing and to mitigate attitudes towards wolves.”
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry will set a damage-based commandment with a quota of 40 wolves for each two hunting seasons. It would also be possible to kill wolves with social-based licenses. The superintendent Jussi Laanikari claims that degree of a hunting legislation including security and public interest will be introduced.
This procedure will allow killing large carnivores without any caused damages.
The co-operation group operating at the wolf territory, or the Large Carnivore Advisory Board will estimate the need of social bases for the hunt.
– In other words, we need hunting to increase local acceptance towards large carnivore, says Laanikari.
The commandment will be implemented as soon as possible after 9th December.
Legal way to decrease the fear of beasts
A couple of years ago it was not common procedure to grant hunting licenses for wolves outside the reindeer husbandry area. According to the Ministry, poaching was a way to control the wolf population.
The purpose is to give legal possibilities to manage wolves.
Specially in Northern Carelia, crowded by beasts, the controversial issue is the number of wolves. People and hunters living eastern border consider the amount of wolves much bigger, than the latest estimate of the Natural Recourses Institute in Finland (Luke) indicates.
Several of the large Carnivore Contact Persons have been went on a strike. It means, that they have stopped recording the observations in TASSU(Paws)-register. Official estimates in Finland are based on the register.
The Ministry will soon receive another mid-term estimate from Luke. After that, the Ministry will decide either to continue with the quota of 40 wolves or not.
In practical, this new procedure would mean a half less killed wolves than last year. The new national quota will include all the wolves died also in traffic accidents or killed with police orders.