A lynx in a forest in Kouvola in June 2017. Helsingin Sanomat in mid-October revealed that the Finnish Wildlife Agency has granted special licences for hunting 300 what is the only wild feline and one of four large predators in the country for the season starting in December. (Jussi Nukari – Lehtikuva)
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MINISTER of Agriculture and Forestry Sari Essayah (CD) has defended the special licences for hunting lynx, the only wild feline and one of four large predators in Finland.
The Finnish Wildlife Agency granted at the beginning of the month special licences for hunting 300 lynxes, equivalent to 12 per cent of the lynx population in the country, citing population management reasons, according to a report by Helsingin Sanomat on 13 October.
The licences are valid for the hunting season starting in December. Such licences have been granted for over 10 years, with last season yielding a haul of 174 lynxes.
Neither the EU nature directives nor Finnish legislation recognise population management as justified grounds for hunting what the former defines as a strictly protected and the latter as a protected species. Both pieces of legislation recognise as valid reasons the protection of public health, prevention of significant damage or protection of other species.
Helsingin Sanomat highlighted that lynxes have caused no personal injuries and only limited damage to property and domestic animals outside reindeer herding regions.
Essayah on Friday argued to the newspaper that the regulatory framework should be updated, highlighting that the lynx population has grown, despite the issuance of special hunting licences, since Finland joined the EU. The status of the feline predator was consequently upgraded from near threatened to least concern in 2019.
Finland currently has a population of an estimated 2,390–2,575 over one-year-old lynxes.
“I believe that most Finns and other Europeans think that of course large predators belong in nature. But they don’t belong in people’s yards, livestock pens or sheep barns. You have to also consider social acceptability. The flip side is that people will resort to unlawful self-help, which isn’t a good thing,” she said.
“The frameworks for this regulation are old, and that’s why there’s a real need to update.”
The update, she added, should seek to strike a balance between the appropriate level of protection and population management in a way that preserves “social acceptability”.
Helsingin Sanomat revealed in its earlier report that the licence applications received for the upcoming hunting season were justified with factors such as the growth, density, vitality and stability of the lynx population, the upholding of hunting traditions, and the prevention of public fears, damage and negative effects on other game populations.
The newspaper perused 65 of the 191 hunting licences granted for the upcoming hunting season on population management grounds.
The Supreme Administrative Court ruled in April 2022 that the execution of national population management goals is not sufficient grounds for granting the hunting licences, adding that whether or not hunting inhibits protection efforts is irrelevant. The Helsinki Administrative Court delivered a similar ruling about six months later, overturning five hunting licences granted on such grounds.
The Finnish Wildlife Agency has instead granted the special permits on grounds of legal provisions that allow the removal of individual animals in a restricted and selected fashion. The EU Court of Justice has ruled, though, that the provisions can be applied only in cases where the objective of the removal is disclosed and scientific evidence is provided to demonstrate that the objective can be achieved.
The failure to disclose the objective was the reason for the licence revocations made last year by the Helsinki Administrative Court.
The Finnish Wildlife Agency has since defined the objective as “committing the local community to maintaining a favourable level of protection by executing the population management plan for lynx by regulating the growth rate of the lynx population with annual adjustments in the level of reduction depending on the population’s development”.
Essayah on Friday admitted to Helsingin Sanomat that some special licences have been granted on insufficient grounds but argued that the revocations do not suggest that large predators could not be hunted on population management grounds.
“You also have to note that the previous government granted the same amount of licences even though the lynx population was smaller at the time. The previous government increased the number of licences to hunt lynx; we’ve refrained from raising it even though computationally up to 420 licences would be possible.”
Member of European Parliament Ville Niinistö (Greens) on Thursday said he has asked the European Commission to determine whether the Finnish policy position aligns with its obligations to the EU.
“Finland has a far too dense population of roe deer and especially wild-tailed deer, which is an alien species, from the viewpoint of traffic safety and for the rest of nature. Lynx is a natural predator of these species. It would be better to allow the lynx population to grow so that the deer population could be curbed naturally. As you can’t point to any harm caused by the growing lynx population, there is no lawful grounds for hunting lynx,” he estimated in a press release.
Also the Parliamentary Ombudsman has received complaints about the position adopted by the Finnish Wildlife Agency, according to Helsingin Sanomat.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
