Sweden: 622 Bears Killed in Trophy Hunt

Sweden is selling off strictly protected animals such as brown bears, lynx, and wolves to brutal trophy hunting.

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants county administrative boards permission to set hunting quotas each year. Hunting lobbyists within the Swedish hunting association and the reindeer industry successfully push each year for increased culling of endangered predators. Appeals for protection are rejected.

The massacre of 622 bears began on 21 August

In 1789, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham demanded: «The question is not, can they reason? nor, can they talk? but, can they suffer?«

The barbaric hunting methods depicted in Baroque art three hundred years ago mirror the way predator hunting is conducted in Sweden today. Modern hunters expose both their dogs and the bears to violence. Bears, which are highly sensitive to heat and stress, are hunted from dawn to dusk by aggressive dogs across seven counties for two months. This takes place during the critical hyperphagia feeding period, in which bears must accumulate enough fat to survive the long Scandinavian hibernation of five to seven months. For female bears, the pressure to find energy-rich food is even greater, as they give birth during hibernation and must nurse their cubs with fat-rich milk.

Anti-predator rhetoric

The seven administrative boards of the northern counties justify licensed trophy hunting on the grounds that it «reduces people’s fear of predators, curbs illegal hunting and strengthens trust in local predator management» .

This is just as illogical as claiming that legalising prostitution would reduce male violence against women.

Vorzeichen von Chaos und Tod. Die Jagd verursacht extremen Stress, führt zu PTBS, unterbricht die Nahrungsaufnahme, die Paarung und den Winterschlaf. In diesem Jahr werden fast 25 Prozent der 2900 schwedischen Bärenpopulation abgeschlachtet, im letzten Jahr waren es mehr als 500.

What are the psychological, ecological, biological, and demographic consequences of such extreme hunting in times of climate change, wildfires, shifting seasons, habitat loss, and pollution? What does this say about Swedish morality and ethics in today's world?

Sweden maintains a new warrior class

A country that expands factory farming, maintains mink farming, and supports recreational violence against wildlife through hunting is not the model state for animal welfare that some Swedish politicians falsely claim it to be before the European Union. Wildlife is not protected by animal welfare legislation. Hunting regulations protect the interests of hunters by normalizing violence against wildlife — hunting as a leisure activity and sport, population control, and wildlife management. This agenda has given rise to a new class of warriors: extreme predator hunters with fighting dogs.

Illegal hunting using sadistic methods is widespread, yet Swedish hunting managers never take into account how legal hunting, combined with poaching, harms animals. In practice, Swedish hunting regulations permit the legal killing of wildlife on virtually any day of the year — day and night, depending on the species. Wildlife is forced to live in constant fear of human predators and hunting dogs. Hunters are even permitted to train their dogs on live animals. The hunting association proudly markets Sweden as«the most hunting-friendly country«, to attract a further 30’000 foreign hunters each year who plunder nature of its peaceful inhabitants.

The unbearable ease of killing wildlife for pleasure and sport is a murderous business in Sweden. Semi-automatic weapons and silencers, GPS devices and cameras attached to dogs – all of this contributes to the development of a trophy hunting subculture within traditional Swedish hunting.Private events featuring celebrities taking test shots at live animals are sponsored by exclusive brands from the weapons industry.Commercialized hunting is an obscene business operated by both private and state landowners.

Swedish wildlife management is the human-caused ecology of fear. The «misogynistic» practice of hunting females and their young, or killing young in front of their mothers, is a common hunting practice for all species of wildlife. In protective hunting of lynx and bears, district administrative authorities even recommend «shooting the young before the mother«. Contrary to all ethics, trophy hunting of lynx is shamelessly scheduled during their mating season. Wolves, foxes, badgers, and wolverines, along with their young, are also pursued and killed in their dens or resting places. Technically, pregnant females can also be killed, as hunting regulations have been expanded.

Traps, snares, and bait are medieval methods used in «civilized» Sweden, along with lures to entice animals into death traps or to shoot them from ambush. Animal families are destroyed, their young are abandoned or orphaned, bears and all other animals often suffer an agonizing death. No one can defend themselves against today's war on wildlife.

Collateral damage to bears, even when they are not killed, is openly ignored. Mutilating and injuring animals during hunting is downplayed, and the “accidental” killing of bear cubs or yearlings is commonplace. Hunters are never punished: the hunter who injured a bear and shot it in the mouth in 2020 can boast of killing the same bear in 2021.

Professor Birger Schantz, a former veterinarian and expert in the examination of gunshot wounds for twenty years, states:«No one can say that a shot animal does not suffer. What we know is that the nervous system that registers pain looks the same in all mammals. A good rule (for understanding) is that what hurts you also hurts an animal.«

A mother bear was killed while protecting her cubs from a hunting dog. The moose hunter claimed he had defended the dog he had released, even though he knew this was a bear's habitat. The cubs, who were hiding in a tree as their mother had taught them, likely starved to death, as young bears are dependent on their mother for at least two years. There is no legal provision for the rescue of wildlife.

Hunting poisons the cycle of life

An environmental scandal is the use of 600–700 tonnes of lead per year in hunting ammunition. Wounded animals and birds continue to be poisoned and die out of sight. Hunters leave slaughter waste and carcasses everywhere, and poisoned birds and scavengers have long been the silent victims of this abuse. Birds also mistake lead pellets for grains at feeding stations where animals are lured in to be shot, often near or on agricultural land. The ecological hypocrisy of farmers who sell hunting leases.

Lead is now also being found in the blood and milk of Swedish brown bears: ten times higher than the EU limit for damage to the human nervous system. Bear cubs are contaminated from birth in their den. This is not mentioned when hunting permits are issued; on the contrary, the consumption and marketing of bear meat and trophies is actively promoted by district administrative authorities, which have also been caught establishing illegal slaughterhouses in violation of CITES regulations in order to make it easier for hunters to extract trophies on the spot.

Tyranny of the hunting minority (<3% of the population). The strategy of the institutions that enable the exploitation of wildlife — the EPA and the district administrative authorities — is to employ hunters. Hunting has so thoroughly corrupted Swedish wildlife management and politicians that the purpose of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and the EU Habitats Directive is regularly violated. Sweden blatantly abuses these strict protection laws by tailoring its own national loopholes and interpreting the limited hunting exemptions without restraint in order to support the trophy hunting industry. Interestingly, the administrative court responsible for cases involving protected predators (Luleå) is geographically located in the region with the highest number of hunters per capita. Could this affect the jury?

A Swedish Disgrace

The district administrative authorities have increased protective hunting every year since 2010. The reindeer industry triumphs over bears, wolves, lynx, and wolverines, as these animals can legally be shot from helicopters and hunted by snowmobile on the grounds that they allegedly disrupt reindeer herding — even though reindeer herders are generously compensated by the state for the loss of reindeer. The hatred of predators in these regions is insurmountable. A village recently proposed a bounty for killing bears.

In 2017, 71 bears were killed within just a few spring months. The five tonnes of bear carcasses were burned and destroyed, much to the greedy outrage of hunters. Animals killed during protective hunts were previously not permitted to be kept as trophies. As a reminder of the corruption, the EPA recently pushed through a new hunter-friendly regulation to appease hunters in the north — they are now allowed to keep trophies and even «hunting guests» for heli-hunting.

The Lazy Santa Claus Lives in Sweden

Swedish reindeer meat products from Lapland hold EU Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status, serving as a marketing coup for the reindeer meat industry to reach the global food market.

Can the export of gourmet food to Europe be considered «environmentally friendly» be called that when the value includes the killing of protected bears, lynxes, wolves, and wolverines? Are the unethical and cruel methods of handling and slaughtering reindeer not just as well known as the horrors behind the French delicacy foie gras?

This does not appear to have changed, despite the investigations and the undercover trip to Sweden by British journalist Rich Hardy. In his book «Not As Nature Intended» he describes the slaughter methods in the chapter «Last Christmas».

A terrifying nightmare, far removed from the nomadic Sami culture that once existed. Hardy writes: «…the tens of thousands of reindeer are herded together (by helicopters and snowmobiles) and transported by truck to commercial slaughterhouses, where they meet an end that is anything but traditional.«

What if children were to understand the bloody nightmare of the real Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer — and of all the «teddy bears« being killed across Sweden at this very moment?

The intricate web of life has never been as fragile as it is today. The global decline of wildlife and, above all, the suffering that humans inflict on non-human animals every single second — how can nations like Sweden claim to be civilized while maintaining a shady business like trophy hunting? How can Sweden trivialize cruel hunting for self-gratification when it so clearly reveals the sadistic side of humanity toward the innocent? Hunting is cruelty, and killing for fun is an addiction.

Barbarians exposed in Sweden.

«The time will come when the mere pleasure of killing will die out in humankind. As long as it persists, humanity has no right to call itself civilized — it is simply barbaric.» (Swedish author Axel Munthe, 1929) Quotes from the book Trophy Hunters Exposed by journalist Eduardo Gonçalves: «It is time for a new contract with nature. Society has banned many forms of animal cruelty and blood sports such as bear-baiting and dogfighting. Yet trophy hunting has so far been spared. The unbridled human domination of nature must be abolished for the sake of us all«.

There it is. The great counter-force is on the rise, thanks to intelligent and compassionate journalists, scientists, writers, activists, and hard-working animal welfare advocates, as well as all those who understand that we share the fear of pain and the fear of death with every living being.