Norway: the country that hates Nature.
Do you associate Scandinavia with vast wilderness? Do you think that in Scandinavia, wild animals thrive on the these immense Northern lands? Then you’re very wrong.
This blog post from 2016 describes the truth about Scandinavia and particularly the worst of the countries, Norway, very well. Well worth reading:
http://doendsjo.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-country-that-hates-its-own-nature.html
Now in 2022, every line in the blogpost, is still true. If not worse.
You would expect that in such a big country as Norway, but also Sweden, that there is room for a balanced ecosystem in which a variety of top predators have enough space to sustain a healthy population. No. This is more the situation elsewhere in Europe, where predators such as wolves, are slowly returning. It's not the case in Scandinavia and particularly not in Norway.
The wolf population in big, big Norway is about 60 wolves (individuals who don’t have part of their territory in Sweden). Now, 25 can be murdered. Last January, Nature conservation organizations tried to stop this murderous course of the government through a trial. They won the case: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/31/norway-wolves-saved-for-this-year-as-animal-rights-groups-fight-cull
Yet somehow, surprise surprise, the government got their will through, thereby violating the Bern Convention and international agreements to protect the already dwindling biodiversity. The Norwegian government fought hard to murder. Very hard. For what? To "dampen the conflict". Right. Between …who? This only worsened the conflict. In this process they even violated their own d*mn law by now allowing "protected" wolves to get murdered in special zone in which they said to prioritize wolf protection. What a bullsh*t Yet they found some tiny loophole in the law so that animal welfare and protection does not count for predators. Only for sheep or the animals that they *like*.
Only hours after the government got what they wanted; the first young male wolf paid with his life (see photo). And more families are going to get torn apart.
https://www.nrk.no/innlandet/den-forste-ulven-ble-skutt-fa-timer-etter-at-den-omstridte-lisensjakta-ble-gjenopptatt-1.15852963
In Norway, there is the strange (not even old) tradition that sheep farmers throw about 2 million sheep out in the wild, completely unsupervised. About 85.000 die just because they cannot adapt. Only only 18% is attributed to *potential* predator attacks. In about all other European countries, sheep are either guarded by dogs and/or a shepherd or are kept behind (electric) fences to…prevent conflict. But the Norwegian sheep farmers can apparently not afford it. But they can afford a to drive a Tesla.
Then there are the hunters who complain about competition with predators over prey and about predators killing their hunting dogs. No shit, you’re intruding their territory and harassing them with your loose dog, smartass. Oh, and every year Norwegian hunters kill between 30-40.000 moose - mostly for sport and a bit of meat that humans don’t even need. Wasn’t it a growing and environmentally necessary trend to reduce meat consumption? Humans are not obligatory carnivores and can go perfectly fine with less or no meat at all. So, one wolfpack kills on average 120 moose a year. Yet, the argument that wolves kill too many moose is flung around in order to justify the extermination of wolves and other predators by these hideous people.
How sick and greedy can this attitude be? And now I’m only speaking about large predators, wolves in particular. Another example is the sick wolverine hunt where they GPS-collar females, to find their den and then shoot mothers with pups in the head. Let's not speak about the totally unnecessary seal pup murder and the whale hunt, or the complete depletion of herring and thereby pretty much emptying the fjords of fish. Or the convenient forgetting that certain areas are protected against building more water-driven powerplants that have a tremendous negative effect on ecosystems. Because...everything and everybody (read: non-human beings) has to yield for human greed and uncontrolled growth (sounds like a particular disease, does it?).
I moved to Norway 10 years ago because I couldn’t stand the high human density in the Netherlands (where I was born). But sometimes I wonder I should leave this f*cking country that hates Nature. But where else can we still find Wilderness? That’s getting increasingly rare on this human infested planet.
So whoever has the idealized image of Norway as a wild country: here is the UGLY TRUTH. Please spread this and find another country to admire wilderness, but not Norway. Better go to Romania or something. I want this scandal to become internationally known. Please openly speak about it and make this known: SHAME ON NORWAY.
The Guardian already noticed this wolf slaughter - hopefully more news channels write about it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/15/finland-sweden-norway-cull-wolf-population-eu
