Swedish court blocks planned wolf cull

A grey wolf looks out from an exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle on Tuesday, May 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Stockholm, Sweden -- A Swedish court on Monday stopped a planned wolf cull because officials had failed to prove it would help to preserve population levels.

Environmental groups had appealed against regional decisions to grant licences for the cull, which would have seen up to 48 animals killed starting from January 2.

“The court did not find that the county administrative boards had been able to meet their burden of proof and demonstrate that the planned hunt would not hinder maintaining a healthy conservation status for the wolf population,” the administrative court in Lulea said in a statement.

Sweden’s government had lowered the “reference value” needed for a healthy wolf population from 300 animals to 170.

Critics including the European Commission and conservationists said the policy was being driven more by politics than science and endangering population numbers.

Farmers and hunters though regard them as a menace because of attacks on sheep and hunting dogs and want their numbers more firmly controlled.

Judge Victoria Backstrom said many of the objections focused on the use of the new reference value when granting licences.

She said the court had found it “unclear” what weight the value could have, given that wolves are protected under the EU’s Habitats Directive.

Sweden’s wolves were hunted to the brink of extinction by the 1960s, prompting the country declared them a protected species.

The animals started reappearing in the late 1970s and 1980s and their population grew through the 1990s.

Sweden began allowing licensed hunts in 2010 after numbers passed 200, issuing quotas for the number that could be killed during a set period.