Sweden has authorized the hunting of 486 brown bears in this year’s licensed hunting season that will run from Aug. 21 to Oct. 15. This quota represents 20% of the country’s bear population, officially estimated to be around 2,450 in 2023.
By Aug. 22 afternoon, hunters had killed more than 150 bears, according to The Guardian.
Swedish authorities view hunting as a wildlife management tool to prevent conflict with people and their domestic animals. However, conservation and animal welfare groups say hunting does little to address conflict with brown bears (Ursus arctos), and has more to do with trophy hunting and its revenue.
“Swedish ‘wildlife management’ is entirely controlled by hunting organizations like the Swedish Hunters’ Association,” Magnus Orrebrant, chair of the Swedish Carnivore Association, told Mongabay in an email. Hunters pay to hunt, and the association receives 43 million kronor ($4.2 million) every year to manage Swedish wildlife, Orrebrant added.
Magnus Rydholm, communications director for the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management, told The Guardian that they are “only following the directive of the Swedish government’s wildlife policy.”
Last year, Swedish authorities handed out licenses to kill 648 bears during the annual trophy bear hunt. An additional 74 bears were killed as part of “protective hunting,” in which animals can be killed if they’re deemed a threat to life or property. While the quota is lower this year, so is the bear population.
The brown bear was nearly eliminated in Sweden by 1930, with roughly 130 individuals remaining. Conservation efforts helped the bears rebound to a peak of 3,300 in 2008. However, it’s been downhill since then, to 2,900 in 2017, and 2,450 in 2023.
“We can absolutely not continue to shoot this many bears if we are to have a stable bear population around the 2,400 bears we have today,” Jonas Kindberg, leader of the Scandinavian Bear project, said in a statement.
Conservation groups say they suspect Sweden wants to reduce the country’s bear population significantly to about 1,400 bears, which the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket) notes is the minimum number of bears for “favorable conservation status” in the country.
However, persistent hunting could devastate the slow-reproducing bears that have only a few cubs every couple of years, Kindberg said in the statement.
Hunting is also changing bear population dynamics, Orrebrant told Mongabay. The larger and healthiest animals are shot first, he said. “The weaker and less viable animals remain simply because humans want a spectacular trophy, whether it is a large bear or a powerful moose bull.”
Moreover, while Sweden protects female bears and cubs from hunting, it’s “very difficult to tell females from males” when hunting, Kindberg said.
Instead of using hunting to earn revenue, conservation groups advocate for tourism. “Why does ‘Visit Sweden’ not actively market Swedish wildlife? They are a fantastic tourist attraction and should not be shot down to minimum levels,” Orrebrant said.
Banner image of Eurasian brown bear courtesy of Magnus Lundgren/Swedensbigfive.org.
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