Ready for wolf hunting after the verdict – Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet

Ready for wolf hunting after the verdict – Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet

After a legal process came the decision of the Appeal which gave the green light to hunt.

– Many will go out and start chasing tomorrow (Friday). It should come snow last night which makes it easier to track, says Gunnar Gløersen, carnivore manager at Swedish Association for Hunting and jaktvårdskonsulent in Värmland.

He thinks it is good that the judgment states that it is compatible with EU legal principles to allow the provincial government to take a decision then just go to appeal to an authority, in this case, the Environmental Protection Agency.

– The door is closed for smaller organizations and groups to pursue issues to court absurdity, he says .

But the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) hopes that the EU will act.

– We wish to take hold of this and organizes it up, legally. We want order, then you can have wolf hunting. But the laws that are to be followed, not bypassed, says WWF’s predator expert Tom Arnbom.

The court has not acted so much about wolves.

– There is a strict legal question. We have not been inside and tried wolf hunting as such, says Lennart Berglund who is kammarrättsråd in Gothenburg.

It started in the counties of Värmland, Örebro and Dalarna County, where the green light for license hunting for a total of 44 wolves were given.

The decision was appealed to the Environmental Protection Agency, which stopped the hunt in Dalarna, but gave the go-ahead in the other two counties.

An association turned to the administrative court in Karlstad and questioned whether the appeal prohibition contained in the Swedish hunting regulation was compatible with EU law.

The Administrative Court took an inhibition decisions and hunt for 24 wolves in Värmland and 12 in Örebro stopped.

That decision was appealed in turn by, among others Hunters Association.

With Thursday’s judgment, the Appeal held that a decision of the provincial government, which appealed to the Environmental Protection Agency, in turn, should not go to appeal.

The judgment of the Appeal can be appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court.