Sweden: Sami People Regain Hunting Rights
Sweden's Supreme Court grants the Sami exclusive authority over hunting rights. 300'000 recreational hunters fear for their privileges.
In Sweden, the Supreme Court has ruled that the indigenous Sami people hold exclusive authority to grant hunting rights for small game and fish.
For the Sami, it is a historically significant moment; for Sweden's recreational hunters, it is a source of frustration. The escalation of a long-simmering conflict looms: who does the land of the reindeer belong to?
Millennia-old rights recognised
The argument put forward by the Sami community of Girjas, which ultimately also convinced the Supreme Court: for thousands of years, they had hunted, fished, and used the land as pasture for their reindeer — until the Swedish state arrived and, from their perspective, took away more and more of their land and thus their livelihoods.
Between 20’000 and 40’000 people in Sweden belong to the Sami group. Around 4’700 of them are reindeer owners, like the family of Ylva Sarri. She welcomes the ruling, as Swedish recreational hunters and their dogs frighten the reindeer and obstruct the work of the Sami. Herders regularly round up their animals to slaughter them and sell the meat and hides.
300’000 recreational hunters fear for their privileges
Joachim Almgren is one of over 300’000 Swedish recreational hunters in the country who now fears that he will only be able to hunt with his dogs in a limited capacity in the future. Recreational hunting and fishing are popular leisure activities among Swedes, who would be reluctant to give them up. What if other Sami communities follow the example of Girjas Sameby and go to court to claim exclusive authority over hunting rights? Which is the greater good: the welfare of the reindeer or the hunting rights of Sweden's recreational hunters? The Hunting Myths Dossier shows why the interests of recreational hunters regularly take precedence over animal welfare.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
