Sweden: Hobby Hunters Out of Control

Sweden is another country that is slowly but surely losing its role model status in animal welfare to partly criminal hunter gangs.

Despite violations of EU law, Swedish authorities have yielded to pressure from the hunting mafia and issued licenses to kill protected lynxes starting March 1st — even during their mating season. Over 3’000 hobby hunters from home and abroad have registered. As early as 2017, lynxes and their young were massacred by trophy hunters.

Sweden, too, is in the grip of an out-of-control hunting mafia that knows no limits in its greed for kills and trophies, and in its hatred of predators. The IG Wild beim Wild has already published a report on this phenomenon in Norway.

Lynxes Shot Out of Trees

The protected lynxes are hunted using specially inbred dogs imported from abroad. The tufted-eared animals are even shot out of trees as they flee from the riffraff. Mother animals and their young are ruthlessly eliminated, as befits a hobby hunter. One of the justifications given is that the lynxes prey on reindeer.

Earlier this year, 22 wolves were already killed in Sweden under special licenses, with an estimated population of around 370 individuals. “Sweden has become a barbaric nightmare for wildlife since the year 2000,” says hunting critic Eva Stjernswärd of the animal and nature conservation organization Hunting Critics.

As with the mafia, the driving force in Sweden is also primarily money. There are countless hunting operators, such as “Hunting for Life», who compete for customers worldwide with licenses and offer perverse hunting events in various countries. Many of these hunting organizers produce their own promotional videos that are hard to surpass in sadism and psychopathy.

Hunting critic Eva Stjernswärd even suspects that the lynx count in Sweden is being manipulated in the same way as the wolf count, in order to maintain a large “political population.” According to population surveys from independent sources, the number of lynxes declined from 1’700 to at times below 850 individuals between 2009 and 2017. The cause of the declining population figures is lawless hunting. Scientists put the minimum required to maintain a healthy lynx population at at least 900 individuals. Politicians and lynx opponents frighten people in order to manipulate them. This is cynical and dirty, but the trick is frequently used, simply because it works so well.

Largest predator populations in Europe: Wolf: Russia 15’000, Romania 2’500, Spain 2’000, Ukraine 2’000, Sweden ranks twelfth with 370. Brown bear: Russia 43’000, Romania 6’000, Sweden 2’800, Finland 1’700. Wolverine: Russia 1’400, Sweden 650, Norway 340, Finland 160. Lynx: Russia 8’000, Finland 2’475, Romania 1’350, Sweden 840. (Sources: IUCN and Naturvårdsverket)

Killing animals for trophies is sometimes criminal, but always wrong

Just as in the Swiss parliament, hobby hunters have also infiltrated politics in Sweden, running a kind of club there to advance their militant interests.

The counterpart to sheep farmers in Switzerland are reindeer owners in Sweden. Both benefit from the pleasant warmth of subsidies. Although they profit from our tax money to tolerate protected predators, they stir up resentment and kill wolves, bears, lynxes, and even eagles.

In 2017, another barbaric case of hunting crime was uncovered in northern Sweden known. A gang of hobby hunters tortured and killed bears and lynxes. They filmed themselves doing it. Phone and computer surveillance, GPS tracking, undercover investigators, and more led the prosecutor's office to the criminals, who were eventually apprehended with the assistance of 40 police officers. The hobby hunters were later convicted of poaching and other offenses, but not of animal cruelty! The prosecutor's indictment included 23 counts such as violations of weapons laws, illegal traps, and so on. Several of the men were reindeer breeders and held political positions in various municipalities. Airport-style security measures were put in place for the court proceedings.

Animal Welfare versus Hobby Hunting

Courageous hunting opponents attempted this year to monitor the wolf hunt in the districts of Västmanland and Dalarna. In doing so, the group was attacked by hobby hunters. A 17-year-old girl was violently assaulted by a masked and militant hobby hunter. Violence against animals and violence against humans are a seamless continuum, as is clearly visible in this video.

Naturally, the mainstream media subsequently focused their coverage of the incident solely on the “disruption of the hunt” — not on the killing of protected animals or the abuse of innocent people who wanted to save the lives of the wolves, laments Eva Stjernswärd.

Romania as a Role Model

Although all large predators in Europe are protected, the number of hunting quotas in Romania also continued to rise in the past. In 2016, as many as 550 bears, 600 wolves, and 500 lynxes were released for hunting at prices of up to 10’000 euros per trophy. The hunting mafia exploited a legal loophole for this purpose, as the hunting of protected species can be authorized in justified individual cases — for example, involving conspicuous animals or those deemed dangerous to humans. The hunting quotas were set each year based on figures provided by hunting associations.

«How can hunting associations calculate in advance how many animals are likely to cause damage — before any damage has even occurred? By introducing the ban, we are simply restoring things to the way the Habitats Directive originally intended,» said Environment Minister Cristiana Pasca-Palmer.

While in Romania trophy hunting was banned as recently as 2016, it is being promoted in Sweden under pressure from the hunting mafia. In Romania, there are not only a remarkable number of pristine old-growth forests, as in Sweden, with species-rich tree populations, but also no feeding stations for even-toed ungulates and, at the same time, a naturally high predator density. And nature is used no less than in Sweden — alpine pastures are everywhere, where animals graze in summer; there are even grazing pigs, alongside sheep, cattle, and horses.

Eva Stjernswärd concludes:

That the people who kill bears, wolves, and lynx in Sweden should be regarded as mercenaries and trophy hunters. WWF Sweden is afraid and does not protest. On its board, a hunting monarch is listed as an honorary member — what a disgrace.

More on crime and hobby hunting and on the animal welfare problem.