http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20010313IE8&pvm=20010313
Research wolves stir up emotions in Kainuu Province
Reindeer herder admits to illegal hunt with snowmobile
By Matti Huuskonen in Suomussalmi and Kuhmo
"Poro, poro, poro". Reindeer herder Markku Matero calls out for his own in
a soft voice on Tuesday in Suomussalmi, some 150 kilometres east of Oulu.
Matero cajoles the animals with a bunch of hay in his hand.
Matero has had a rough week behind him. A good friend of his had chased a
wolf on a snowmobile on Wednesday, and had then gone on to shoot the animal
- with an unlicensed Parabellum pistol - on a frozen lake.
"A really annoying and ****ty case. It is just the same if a friend takes
the wheel while drunk and gets caught or drives off the road and dies. You
can only ask yourself why on earth he did it". Matero, who leads legal wolf
hunting expeditions in Suomussalmi, describes his feelings with a shake of
the head.
Later that Wednesday, the Kainuu radio station reported that the leader of
the reindeer husbandry area had confessed in police interrogations to the
chase and shooting. By the evening, the information had reached the
national television evening news broadcasts.
The shots from the reindeer herder's pistol and the other poaching incident
that was revealed last week in Kuhmo are turning out to be quite expensive
for the reindeer herding community: the Ministry of Agriculture and
Forestry is planning quotas for wolf hunting even for the reindeer
husbandry area. Currently wolves can be freely hunted in the area during
the winter months.
Over one hundred men have participated in the hunts organised by Matero.
Matero says that one third of them have been reindeer herders, with the
rest regular hunters. "I have made it a point to emphasise to the men the
importance of abiding by laws", Matero claims.
Legal hunts have been an efficient way for reindeer herders to kill those
wolves that have mistakenly wandered into their grazing areas. Hence
Matero's glumness over the fact that illegal actions now threaten to
tighten the conditions for hunting.
The Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute (RKTL) has tracked six
wolf-packs this winter, aided by radio transmitters on collars. Two of the
packs, which had previously lived near the northern border of Kuhmo,
wandered up into the Halla reindeer husbandry area, into Hyrynsalmi and
Suomussalmi. Researcher Ilpo Kojola of RKTL explains that the wolves were
attracted by elks, at least in the latter case.
The huntsmen led by Matero have killed the majority of the wolves in the
packs legally. However, last week two wolves were illegally killed: the
female that the reindeer herder killed with a pistol was joined by Ugri, a
research wolf who wore a collar and was deliberately run over on Thursday
with a van in Kuhmo.
The two men from Suomussalmi who ran over Ugri knew to wait for the wolf in
exactly the right spot. RKTL researchers had followed Ugri with a
snowmobile in Suomussalmi and tried to direct it to the supposedly safe
Kuhmo area.
"We negotiated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry on whether we
could sedate Ugri and then transport him to Kuhmo. However, the Ministry
has taken a tight stance on the transfers of wolves, and therefore the
thought of forcibly moving Ugri was also abandoned", Ilpo Kojola of RKTL
recalls.
The researchers managed to guide Ugri to a forest truck road that leads
from Suomussalmi to Kuhmo. There is a fence between the two communities all
the way along the communal border, in order to protect the purity of a
breed of deer found locally - otherwise it might wander north and mate with
reindeer. There are gates in the fence where roads cross the boundary.
"We agreed with the reindeer herders that we would open the gate for a
short while to let Ugri run back into Kuhmo. The fence was open for five to
ten minutes. The wolf ran right through", research assistant Markus
Suominen recounts.
A few kilometres further south, the forest truck road joins the road
leading from Suomussalmi to Vartius. This was where Ugri was already being
awaited. The van drove after the wolf for about half a kilometre, until it
succeeded in shoving the wolf to the side of the road, knocking it
unconscious.
"The men quickly threw the wolf into the back of the van and drove around
Kainuu for a few hours. Finally the vehicle wound up in a yard in
Suomussalmi, where the dying animal was finished off with an electric
device that is meant for killing animals raised for their fur", Suomussalmi
police chief Antti Karjalainen describes.
"In addition to an obvious hunting violation, this may also be a case of
cruelty towards animals", Karjalainen estimates, considering how the
injured wolf was driven around for so long.
There are five fur farms in Suomussalmi. Markku Matero states that he
condemns all illegal activities. He believes the legal hunting of wolves
and bears is justified, however: "How many Finns would be prepared to pay
3,000 markka a month in taxes for damages caused by predators?"
Matero bases his calculation on the significantly lower revenues from
calves in the Halla reindeer breeding area over the past few years. In a
normal year, maybe eighty to ninety of the calves from Matero's one hundred
female reindeer grow up to be slaughtered. This winter Matero will have
some fifty animals for slaughter.
"The EU banned hunting bears in the springtime, and nowadays the bears
follow herds of reindeer all summer long. They fatten themselves up with
the best suckling calves. No compensation is paid out as there is nothing
left of the calves for evidence", Matero laments.
"The wolves take them in the wintertime if they are not killed. We do not
have any trade unions to watch over things around here, but we have to
watch out for ourselves."
Matero feels that Kuhmo, the southern neighbour of Suomussalmi, is the
wrong place to study packs of wolves with radio transmitters. He believes
the studies may even cause the animals stress and encourage them to wander
northwards into the reindeer husbandry area. "At least one community should
be in between as a buffer zone."
Kojola answers that it is quite normal for wolves to make excursions
outside of their territories when the packs grow. He also supports
switching the research site. It is no use wasting money and effort if those
animals that make the mistake of wandering north are systematically killed,
either legally or illegally.
Police chief Karjalainen reminds us of the old, slowly changing attitudes.
Still in the 1960s, large predators were regarded as fair game even on the
statute books, and in practice they were outlawed. Times have changed but
attitudes lag behind, and the reindeer herders are aggrieved that their
compensation payments take so long to arrive and are seldom commensurate
with their losses.
===============================================
http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20010306IE14&pvm=20010306
Ministry to limit wolf hunting in reindeer husbandry area
Illegal kills prompt new legislation
At present Finnish law allows for wolves to be hunted in the northern
regions of the country that are designated as reindeer husbandry areas.
This means Finland has a special EU dispensation to hunt the otherwise
protected beast. In the reindeer herding areas of the country wolves can be
killed between October and March, but anywhere else in the country a
special permit is required, either from the ministry itself or from a local
game management department. .
Now, however, things look to be changing, in the wake of a number of
illegal kills that have come to light in recent weeks. It appears probable
that already by next winter the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry will
have tightened up the regulations in such a way that even in the reindeer
herding areas there will be restrictions.
"It looks very unlikely indeed that we shall be able to stand to one side
on this one. There have been complaints from Finland and I happen to know
that complaints have been sent to the EU Commission in Brussels. After what
has happened recently it would be very hard to claim to the Commission that
Finland has a properly managed wolf population", said Christian Krogell, a
special adviser to Kalevi Hemilä, the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
The Ministry has given a total of seven special permits this year, six in
Kainuu Province and one in Parikkala close to the Russian border in the
south-east of the country. All the wolves in these cases have subsequently
been killed. Two other permits have been issued in Northern Karelia, but
the wolves are still at large.
Finland's special position on wolf hunting is based on the fact that the
wolf is seen as a real threat to the livelihood of reindeer herders.
However, Krogell admits that this year the culling of the wolf packs has
taken on the sort of forms that make it look very much as if it has not
always been about hunting down animals that have caused damage.
At the beginning of the year there were reports of two packs of wolves
being tracked down and killed in the reindeer husbandry areas of the north
- a total of 13 animals. Some of them had migrated into the region from
further south, where they would have been afforded the status of a
protected species.
There have been claims by conservationists that the wolves were
deliberately driven into what became some kind of "killing fields" for them.
Last week a wolf was chased by a hunter on a motor sledge in Suomussalmi,
and was then killed. The man in question, who despatched the animal with a
Parabellum pistol, did not have a gun licence. On Friday two men in the
same community deliberately ran over a wolf in a van.
Both these cases took place ostensibly in the area of reindeer husbandry,
but both were illegal. It is not permitted to hunt wolves from (or with)
motor vehicles, as it is regarded as ethically questionable. There were
also a number of unanswered questions about the second incident, involving
the hiding of the skin and body of the wolf. Police are investigating the
case.
Reindeer herder representatives have argued that the sharply increased wolf
population in this country has begun to do real damage to their livelihood.
The illegal culls are publicly condemned, but they are privately widely
understood among the herders.
One reason for the anger is that compensation payments for livestock killed
by wolves take a long while to arrive, and there is a personal liability
clause that means in effect that a reindeer owner only gets full
compensation for the third animal he loses to wolf attacks. It is felt that
if the wolves are to be protected in the name of biodiversity and the
national interest, then at least they should not be protected out of the
reindeer herders' pockets.
The Finnish wolf population is currently something like 100 or a little
more. Efforts have been made in recent years to bring the numbers up and to
spread the animals from the eastern border towards other areas. The wolves
have nevertheless stubbornly remained close to the border.
The Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute has calculated that a
total of 27 wolves have been killed this year, or around a quarter of the
entire population. Among those killed were six wolves that had been tagged
with radio collars by researchers, in an effort to track their movements.
The wolf killed in the Suomussalmi van incident was also fitted with a
radio collar.
Despite the apparently high attrition rate among the wolves, researchers
are not quite so quick to say the animal is about to become extinct here,
even in the light of the latest "wild" killings. The wolf breeds fairly
successfully, and around 40 cubs can be expected to be born in a single
winter. If nothing exceptional happens next winter, the wolf population
will remain fairly stable, argues Ilpo Kojola of the Game and Fisheries
Research Institute.