"Europe seems hellbent on creating the most hostile environment for bears possible"

WE EUROPEANS ARE INCAPABLE of living alongside predators.

- MARK CARWARDINE

We blithely expect people in Africa and Asia to share their homes with lions, tigers, Komodo dragons and a host of other potentially dangerous animals without question. So why can’t we be as sympathetic and enlightened about predator conservation as they are?

The latest guilty party is Sweden – which has unleashed another season of hunting hell on its brown bears (see box). Sweden’s bears were hunted almost to extinction and, by 1930, there were just 130 of them left. Conservation efforts pushed numbers up to a peak of 3,300 in 2008, but then the authorities decided that bear numbers had to be reduced “to prevent conflict with people and their domestic animals”. Now there are 2,450, and Swedish conservation groups believe the aim is to reduce the population to just 1,400.

Is there a bear problem in Sweden? No, there is not. In 2022, 11 sheep were killed by bears, while 220,000 were killed by humans for food. Meanwhile, over the last century, only two people have been killed by bears, both in connection with hunting.