Posted on 01/31/2005 4:54:18 AM PST by franksolich
Norway's wolf claim unsupported Scandinavian wolf researchers say that Norwegian authorities have no scientific basis for their claim that the ongoing cull of five wolves will not threaten Norway's wolf population.
Here the first of five wolves was shot in Koppang on Jan. 16. The second wolf shot was a fertile female from a protected zone, shot by mistake.
Norway's claim that killing five of its roughly 20 wolves poses no danger is based on an argument that Norway and Sweden have a shared wolf population of a bit over 100 animals. Experts dispute the Norwegian standpoint, forskning.no, the web site for Norway's research organizations, reports.
The site published a series of articles on Friday that examined the ongoing licensed hunt of five wolves in Norway's Hedmark County. Wolf researchers at Skandulv (The Scandinavian Wolf Project) say that the Norwegian ruling has no documentary basis.
"Norwegian authorities have not invited views from researchers before the hunt and they have not carried out any vulnerability analysis themselves, which would have been reasonable. So they cannot say with authority that the hunt does not pose a danger to the (wolf) population," said biologist and Skandulv coordinator Olof Liberg. "This is a hope and not a professionally founded assertion," he told the site.
Liberg said that the ongoing hunt had destroyed two of Norway's three reproducing couples.
Norwegian wolf researcher Petter Wabakken at the University College in Hedmark believes the hunt has purely political motives.
"The problem that worries me is that Norwegian authorities believe it is fine to hunt a population with three reproducing individuals and claim no damage while Swedish animal management authorities, who must also be expected to have a certain biological insight, believe that ten reproducing individuals is not enough to justify a licensed hunt," Wabakken said.
Swedish wolf researcher Håkan Sand argued that the Norwegian claim had no direct scientific refutation either, except for one aspect. The Norwegian wolf population is now strongly marked by inbreeding, and the felling of an 'immigrant' wolf could have grave consequences for the pack's ability to grow and survive. Skandulv researchers believe that the Norwegian-Sweden wolf population is already showing signs of problems due to a lack of genetic diversity.
Dr. Torbjörn Ebenhard at Sweden's Center for Biological Diversity was simply baffled by Norway's stance. "I don't know how they reached it. They have shown no calculations," Ebenhard said.
The wolf is listed as a highly endangered species in both Sweden and Norway.
"ping" for the Norway list
You know, madam, I'm not sure, and I read the previous news stories without illumination. Perhaps someone from Norway could enlighten us. Even so few of them perhaps pose a greater threat to Norwegian reindeer and bison?
Sheeps
Good morning to you, sir.
Okay, so the sheep need protected from the wolves in Norway, just as the cattle need protected from the coyotes in Nebraska; no one can disagree there.
But if there are (were) only five capable-of-reproducing pairs of wolves, surely that was not enough to do any considerable evinal decimation?
Preemptive action.
And good morning to you too :-)
I am a big supporter of pre-emptive action, sir; it comes from that most members of my family (but not me) were active in medicine, particularly preventative medicine.
But surely it is not the goal of Norway to eradicate, to totally eliminate, these wolves?
No it isn't.
I must admit that I haven't followed the wolf hunt story much at all.
To me it seems to be part of a conflict between the countryside and urbanites. People want the "big city" government to stay away from their affairs.
A lot of the prohunt sentiments are probably based on prejudice against wolfes.
But, so what? Killing one or two wolves hardly ranks up there with the issues of today.
In the same way as saving one or two of these wolves hardly will serve to change the course of animal evolution.
The angle that interests me most about the whole thing is the national sovereignty issues for Norway with regards to the EU and Sweden. And if crazy Swedish government officials along with PETA demonstrators are up in arms about the whole deal, somehow I become very stoic and relaxed :-)
Well, okay, sir, Norway was down to five pairs of these predatory animals.....and another two apparently hit the dust. This seems like "total eradication" to me.
Rattlesnakes proliferate in the western half of Nebraska--really vile animals--and people are always killing them, but I doubt if anybody really wishes to totally exterminate them, because apparently they do have environmental benefits.
And deer are a nuisance in the eastern half of Nebraska, and people are always killing them, but the more that get killed (by collisions with automobiles, by deer-hunting), the more they proliferate. I think most people around here (of which 80% seem to be Danish, sir, your ancient allies) would like it if there were fewer deer, but I do not think anyone would like to see no deer at all.
Aha, sir, I'm in your corner 100%.
The "real issue" seems to be your ancient foes Sweden, the European "Union," and the animal fanatics.....in which case I must be on your side, on the side of Norway.
I read an interesting article in a Norwegian newspaper--but too old to be posted here as "current news"--about the problems Norway has with the European "Union."
From this "American perspective," it appears Norway is being kicked around by Old Europe, because Norway refuses to join Old Europe.
Apparently it is more important to Norwegians, that they be Norwegian, rather than be "European."
Surely such a people deserve the admiration and respect of all Free Republicans everywhere (which is why I started the "Norway ping list"), because of their stubborn insistence upon being those people God made them, and not as Paris, Brussels, and Berlin wish them to be.
There's a wolf loose on the show Arrested Development.
Sorry, sir, but there is a reason, unfathomed by the human mind, that all things exist, including rattlesnakes and members of the democraticunderground.
It is best to not tamper too much with nature, because in the end, nature wins out. (Please notice the qualifying phrase, "too much," which gives allowance for some tampering.)
As for the deer, sir, this is a real quandary.....especially for the "animal rights" activists, who stubbornly resist hunting. One would think that as the human population in an area increased, that the animal population would decrease, but that appears to not be the case in Nebraska, where there are six times more deer today, than there were in 1890.
As you can imagine, "animal rights" activists are not popular in this neck of the woods, er, stretch of prairie. I myself regard them with as much esteem as I do the loathesome members of the democraticunderground.
But really, it is a complicated issue, sir; given our experience (here in Nebraska) with the near-extinction of the bison, one of the most noble creatures that ever graced these plains. There were once hundreds of millions of them, depleted to less than 400 by 1910.
The bison have been brought back from near-death; there are a few million of them now (although some are removed from the hospitable terrain of Nebraska)--but it was a close call, and I think many here are somewhat leery of driving any species into extinction, even if rattlesnakes, deer, and Democrats.
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