How Extremist Activists Endanger Hunters in Finland

Finland has a very large population of cervids, such as moose and deer. Due to their large numbers, they cause significant damage by destroying young forest plantations and causing traffic accidents. On the other hand, they provide hunters with both a hobby and food.

The balance of this whole system is overseen by the Finnish Wildlife Agency, which grants hunting permits for cervid species in such a way that each population remains viable and healthy. At the same time, attention is also paid to ensuring that predator populations—especially wolves—remain strong and safe for people, so that they do not need to hunt humans moving in nature due to lack of food. Wolves have not generally been hunted in Finland in this millennium, except for individuals that have threatened humans or specialized in attacking livestock.

This equation seems to be too difficult to grasp for those belonging to the Animal Liberation Front. That is why they have made hunting towers used by hunters dangerously unsafe by sawing them.

The police are currently investigating these crimes and searching for the perpetrators. According to Member of Parliament Sanna Antikainen (Finns Party), it would be important that the police and prosecutors treat these acts as endangerment of life rather than mere vandalism. This wish is worth supporting, so that various political activist groups, which are resorting to increasingly harsh measures, would be made to comply with the law and avoid endangering other people.

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EU Decision-Makers Did the Bear a Disservice

In Finland, there are four so-called large carnivores. They are the bear, wolf, lynx, and wolverine.

Of these, only the bear and wolf can pose a danger to humans. Or more precisely, only the bear, since the last time a Finnish wolf killed a human was in 1882.

Bears, on the other hand, occasionally attack people. A particularly dangerous time is spring, when these rulers of the forest have cubs. Mother bears will attack, especially if, for some reason—such as during a jog—a person happens to come between them.

The risk exists in remote forest areas, of course, but a bear attack is especially likely when the predator roams densely populated areas, such as towns and cities.

That’s why it’s concerning that recently, bears have been wandering into cities more frequently. According to Finnish large carnivore researcher Ilpo Kojola, this is because bear hunting has practically come to a complete halt in recent years.

This has happened because Finland’s Supreme Court ruled that population control hunting is illegal in Finland. This, in turn, stems from the European Union's Habitats Directive, which requires member states to prohibit the deliberate capture or killing of individuals from certain species in the wild.

Because of this, Finns can currently do nothing but admire urban bears and, at the same time, fear the moment when a bear finally kills—whether to defend its cubs or for some other reason—a human, or perhaps more. And after that, wait anxiously to see what kind of hatred toward predators will take hold among Finns.

If and when that happens, the only certainty is that many bears will be poached. And that likely serves neither the interests of the EU's directive makers nor the bears themselves.

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A popular hobby risks ecological balance, private property and human health in Finland

A popular hobby risks ecological balance, private property and human health in Finland

Ticks carry bacteria and viruses with them. The bacteria are causing Lyme borreliosis, which is a serious disease but can be treated with antibiotics. In contrast, some viruses may cause Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), which is a serious tick-borne disease in Europe that can only be avoided by vaccinations.

Today it was informed that the number of TBE cases has increased considerably in Sweden and Finland due to the climatic change and and COVID-19 pandemic, the latter of which has brought people for outdoor activities. At least in Finland one of the main causes was not mentioned. That is the dramatically increased number of white-tailed and also roe deer, both of which act as hosts to ticks, and therefore enable higher population sizes of disease causing agents.

Deer populations also cause major damage to young forests by eating hardwoods and pines, which result in direct losses to forest owners as well as directs forest owners to plant spruces, which in Central Europe have been attacked seriously by beetles, and the same has been predicted to happen also in Nordic countries if the climates continue warming as predicted.

Hunting is, however, a popular hobby in Finland, and people involved are bringing huge amounts of food to the deer in wintertime, which increases considerably their population sizes. That maximizes the amount of animals for hunting but also their effect on the spread of tick-borne diseases and forest damages. 

For anyone looking from the side, it should be imperative to end the feeding of deer due to the vast problems they cause. And the common sense says, that white tailed deer should be removed from the country due to its nature as an alien invasive species. It simply is not sustainable to jeopardize ecological balance with an aggressively reproducing alien animal, put the health of lay people at risk nor damage their properties because of a hobby - no matter how enjoyable that may be.

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