Today the Scandinavian Wolf population consists of about 300 individuals divided into about 40 family groups (also called packs), most of them located in the Central parts of Sweden. Since then a few more Wolves have arrived naturally from the Russian-Finnish population, which has been an important contribution to the population. These Wolves founded the new Wolf population and multiplied successfully into about 200 individuals. In the early 1980’s three Wolves migrated from the Russian-Finnish population all the way to the county of Värmland in Southern Sweden close to the Norwegian border. In 1966 wolves were officially protected even if there we no wolves left in Scandinavia. There may still have been a few wolves in the remote Northern mountain range, but wolves were claimed extinct in the 1960’s. The wolf population was pushed to the North until it was finally extinct. The fastest decline in the population was between 1840-1860. As an example 6,790 wolves were killed in Sweden during the period of 1827-1839. A massive hunt was launched and wolves were soon extinct in te Southern parts of Sweden. Many families were affected by the loss of livestock and when a wolf killed nine children in Gysinge during 1920-21 the support to eradicate the wolf population was widespread. That became a huge problem for farmers who had a couple of million cattle and sheep grazing in the forests during the Summer season. With a lack of prey the wolves probably began to take more livestock. Moose became rare and roe deer could only be found in a few estates in Skåne in Southern Sweden. This led to a decimation of the populations of deer. In 1647 a bounty on wolves was offered which further decimated the population.ĭespite the hunting there were probably thousands of wolves in Scandinavia during the 1700’s, but in 1789 a law was passed that allowed common people to hunt on their own land, something that had only been the right of the royalties and the nobility until then.
Then as cattle and sheep grazing became common, wolves were killed because they preyed on the herds of domestic animals. At first wolves were hunted for their thick winter fur. There has been many reasons for hunting wolves. Man have since put a lot of effort into keeping the wolf population at a low level until we managed to eradicate the wolf population from Scandinavia completely by the end of the 1800’s. Since then wolves have been a part of the Scandinavian fauna as well as the cultural history. The wolves came to Scandinavia from Eurasia after the last ice age some 10,000 years ago, followed by humans, deer and other mammals. Wolves have recently returned to Sweden and Scandinavia since they were claimed extinct in the 1960’s.
Scientific name: Canis lupus hunted to extinction
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