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Sweden: 622 Bears will be killed in trophy hunting



Unmasking the myth of a civilized country. Cruelty to animals prevails in Sweden.

by Eva Stjernswärd, artist painter and hunting critic
Image: Abraham Hondius, Chasse à l’ours (1683)/Wikimedia commons


Sweden is selling out strictly protected animals like brown bears, lynxes and wolves to brutal trophy hunting. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) give permission to the County Administrative Boards to decide the hunting quota each year. Hunting activists in the Swedish Hunting Association and in the reindeer industry succeed every year lobbying for an increased elimination of endangered predators. Trophy hunting is an act of sanctioned animal cruelty and appeals for protection are constantly denied.
This year’s massacre of 622 bears started 21st of August.  

Sentient beings do suffer  
In 1789: the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham challenged “The question is not Can they reason, nor Can they speak – the question that must be asked is: Can they suffer?”

Barbaric hunting methods, illustrated in baroque art three hundred years ago, correspond to the way predator hunting prevail in Sweden. Today’s hunters subject their dogs as well as the bears to violence. Bears, over-sensitive to heat and stress, are hunted with aggressive hounds from dawn to dusk, during two months, in seven counties. This occurs during the critical period of vital feeding (hyperphagia) for bears to accumulate enough fat to survive the long Scandinavian hibernation of 5-7 months. The stress to find energy food is even greater for

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female bears, as they must give birth to the new generation during hibernation and feed their young with high-fat milk.  

Anti-predator rhetoric. The seven northern County Administrative Boards motivates licensed trophy hunting as a remedy to; “alleviate people’s fear of predators”, “reduce illegal hunting and increase confidence in the local management of predators”.  
As illogical as if legalized prostitution would lessen men’s violence against women.

Omen of chaos and death. Hunting inflicts extreme stress, causes PTSD, disrupts feeding, mating and hibernation. This year nearly 25 percent of the bear population of Sweden’s 2900 individuals will be slaughtered and last year more than 500.
What are the psychological, ecological, biological and demographic consequences of such extreme hunting in times of climate change, wild fires, seasonal timing shifts, habitat loss and pollution? This day and age - what does it say about Swedish moral and ethic?  

Sweden entertains a new warrior class. A country that increase animal factory farming, keep up mink farming and supports gamifying violence against wild animals in hunting, is not the model state for animal welfare that some Swedish politicians falsely asserts before the European Union. Wild animals are not protected by the Animal welfare law. Hunting regulations protect hunter’s interests, as to normalize the violence against wild animals; hunting as leisure and sport, population control and wildlife management. This agenda has created a new warrior class: extreme predator hunters with fighting dogs.  
Illegal hunting with sadistic methods is common, but Swedish hunt managers never take into consideration how legal hunting in tandem with poaching afflict animals. In practice, Swedish hunting regulations sanctions legal killing of wild animals basically every day of the year. Day and night depending on the species. Wild animals are forced to live in constant fear of human predators and hunting dogs. Hunters can even train their dogs on live animals. The Hunting Association proudly commercialize Sweden as “the most hunting liberal country” to attract additional 30 000 foreign hunters every year to plunder Nature of her peaceful inhabitants.

The unbearable lightness of killing wild animals for pleasure and sport is a murderous business in Sweden. Semi-automatic weapons and silencers, GPS device and cameras on the dogs, all for a subculture of trophy hunting warlords to develop within the traditional Swedish hunting. Privat events with celebrities test shooting on live animals, are sponsored by exclusive brands from the weapon industry. Commercialized hunting is the obscene business entertained by both private and stately landowners.

Swedish wildlife management is the human-induced Ecology of Fear. The “misogynistic” practice of hunting females and their young or killing young in front of their mothers is a common hunter practice for all sorts of wild species. It is even recommended in protective hunting of lynxes and bears, “to shoot the young before the mother”, by the County Administrative Boards. Against all ethics, the trophy hunt for lynx is shamelessly scheduled during their mating period. Also wolves, foxes, badgers and wolverines and their cubs are persecuted and killed in their dens or resting places. Technically also pregnant females can be killed as hunting seasons have been largely extended. Trapping, snaring and baiting are medieval methods used in “civilized” Sweden as well as attractants to lure animals into death traps or ambush gunning. Animal families are destroyed, their young are abandoned or orphaned, bears and all other animals often suffer painful deaths. None can defend themselves from today’s war on wildlife.


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Collateral damage to bears, even if not killed, is openly ignored. Maiming and injuring animals during hunting is belittled and killing bear cubs or yearlings “by mistake” is common. Hunters are never punished: the hunter that injured and shot a bear in the mouth 2020, could boast of finishing off the same bear in 2021.  
Professor Birger Schantz, former veterinary surgeon and expert in studying gun wounds for twenty years, explained: “Nobody can say that a shot animal does not suffer. What we do know is that the nerve system that register pain looks the same in all mammals. A good rule (for understanding) is that what you think hurts on you, also hurts on an animal.”

A mother bear was killed when protecting her cubs from a hunting dog. The moose hunter claimed defense of the dog he had let loose, knowing it was a bears habitat. The cubs hiding up in a tree, as they are taught by their mother, likely starved to death as cubs depend on their mother for at least two years. No legal policy exist to rescue wild animals.

Hunting poison the Circle of Life. An environmental scandal, is the use of 600-700 tons of lead every year for hunting ammunition. Wounded animals and birds from gun shots continue led poisoned but die out of sight: more than sixty percent of wild geese live with led pellets in their bodies and so do many wolves, lynxes and foxes. Hunters are leaving butchery and carcasses everywhere and poisoned birds and scavengers have long been silent victims of this abuse. Birds also mistake lead pellets for grains around feeding places where animals are lured to be shot, often close to or on agricultural soil. The ecological hypocrisy of landowners selling hunt leases.  
Now lead is also found in the blood and milk of Swedish brown bears: ten times higher than the EU threshold value for damage on the human nerve system. The bear cubs are contaminated from birth in their den. This is not mentioned when issuing hunt permits, on the contrary, consumption and commercialization of bear meat and trophies is encouraged by the County Administrative Boards, that also have been caught creating illicit slaughtering sites, violating CITES-rules, to facilitate for hunters to take the trophies in situ.    

Tyranny of the hunting minority (<3% of population). The strategy of institutions that enables wildlife exploitation, the EPA and the County Administrative Boards, is to employ hunters. Hunting has corrupted Swedish wildlife management and politicians to such an extent that the purpose of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and the EU species and habitat directive are regularly violated. Sweden blatantly abuses these stringent protection laws by adjusting its own national loopholes and unrestrainedly interpreting the limited hunting exemptions to sustain the trophy hunting industry. Interestingly, the Court of administrative law, for appeals concerning protected predators (Luleå), is geographically placed in the region that houses the highest number of hunters per inhabitant. Could this affect the jurymen?  

A Swedish disgrace. The County Administrative Boards have increased protective hunting each year since 2010. The reindeer industry wins over bears, wolves, lynxes and wolverines as they can be gunned down legally from helicopters and chased with snowmobiles, accused of disturbing reindeer husbandry. In spite of the industry being generously compensated by the state for any loss of reindeers. The hatred of predators in these regions is irreconcilable. A village recently proposed bounty money for killing them.  
In 2017 as many as 71 bears were killed in few spring months. The five tons of bear carcasses where burned and destroyed to the greedy annoyance of hunters. Animals killed in protective hunting could not be kept as trophies before. Reminding corruption, the EPA recently sneaked through a new pro-hunter instruction to please hunters in the North – now they can keep trophies and even take on “hunting guests” for the helihunting.
 

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Rotten Santa reside in Sweden. Swedish reindeer meat products from across Lapland have EU’s Protected Designation of Origin status (PDO) and function as a marketing coup for the reindeer meat industry to reach the global food market.
Can export of gourmet food to Europe be considered “environmental friendly” if the value include the killing of protected bears, lynxes, wolves and wolverines? Are the unethical and gruesome handling and slaughter methods of the reindeers not known as are the horrors behind French luxury food foie gras?
Nothing seem to have changed in spite of the investigation and undercover journey to Sweden by British journalist Rich Hardy. In his book “Not As Nature intended”, the chapter “Last Christmas” describe the methods of handling, transporting and killing reindeer. A scary nightmare far from the nomadic sami culture that once existed. Hardy writes “…the tens of thousands of reindeer are herded (with helicopters and snowmobiles) and trucked to commercial slaughterhouses to meet a demise that is anything but traditional.”

What if our children would understand the bloody nightmare of real Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – and for all the “Teddy-Bears” killed in this instant all over Sweden?

The intricate Web of Life has never been more fragile. The decline of wildlife worldwide and above all - the suffering caused by humans to non-human animals every second - how can nations like Sweden pretend to be civilized when nurturing a shady business like trophy hunting? How can Sweden trivialize cruel hunting for self-gratification, when this clearly exposes a sadistic side of man against the innocent. Hunting is about cruelty and killing for fun is an addiction.  

Barbarians in Sweden exposed.
The time will come when the mere pleasure of killing will die out in man. As long as it is there, man has no claim to call himself civilized, he is a mere barbarian.” (Swedish writer Axel Munthe, 1929) Citations from journalist Eduardo Gonçalves book Trophy Hunters exposed: “It is time for a new contract with nature. Society has banned many forms of animal cruelty and blood-sports such as bear baiting and dogfighting. However trophy hunting has so far escaped. The unbridled human supremacy within the natural world must be discarded, for all our sakes”.  

There it is! The great Counter Force of Protectors, on the rise thanks to intelligent and compassionate journalists, scientists, writers, activists and hard working animal defenders together with all humans who understand that we share the fear of pain and the fear of death with all beings. 

  1 year ago
MOJOSTREAMING WILDLIFE VIDEO CONTEST

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  1 year ago
The Shooting Trap Part 3. Words Can Hurt


Words can hurt - in this case kill, by definition…
Supposed to be the last argument, but maybe not
Words have meaning, lead to shared understanding 
Trophy on its own a clear word, same for Hunting 
Compounded they go oxymoronic, nonsensical 
Marketing for deliberately misleading
Trophy Hunting, no sporting prowess killing
Feel good appellation - maybe only feel better
Body parts are not trophies in 2022, neither manhood rituals
Like they were in early human wars and hunting gathering 
Held some mystical power over a dead enemy
Since when an enemy - a lion, elephant, giraffe, a rhino
And all of the others savagely pictured and posted
When it’s minding its own business
Just trying to stay alive in its own habitat
When was Trophy appropriated to blood-sport
For that matter, when did sport turn to killing
Its just a transaction, akin to an execution
A Trophy Hunter Hit Man fulfilling his own Contract
Purchases a licence to kill
Still misnomenclatured, still oxymoronic
Ethics left to humans playing god
When nature is ruled by the gods of chance
No guarantee for prey to make it through the day
Even if they could pray
Let the Dictionaries take note, erroneous definition
Trophy Hunting is neither sport not hunting
The search is on for its definitive replacement 
Body Part Killing, no direct transliteration 
Killing Animals for Body Parts - sounds like the descriptor
There’s a challenge for you 
Come up with an accurate name
Animal Killing (for no good reason (understood)
Is as close as a poet can get
Until creative licence is enacted
Thrill Killing grinning, compulsive killing chilling
Any deprecating descriptor
Still more accurate than Trophy Hunting
Put it in a can, as they do with lions
Let them shoot it down, a guaranteed kill
Let them pose, maniacally grinning
Next to the lifeless, grotesque corpse
Trophy Hunting, rest in pieces
Valued parts cut off, carted away
To stare out in death another day
From a former killer’s wall

‘It’s easier from an armchair’
I agree with Roger, in ‘Drowse’
Making these ‘expert’ comments
In ignorance from far away

No one wins this debate
While the animals lose their lives
To ‘conserve’ more of their kind 
Into it they fell so easily
The Shooting Trap

  2 years ago
The Case Against Trophy Hunting

The case against trophy hunting

1)Trophy hunting defies all logic.

It’s a bizarre notion to shoot something you are trying to protect in the first place. Let’s take the example of wolves, which faced extinction not so long ago. Spending decades bringing them back from extinction makes no sense, only to begin killing them again.

2)Trophy hunting is unethical.

Most importantly, the practice is entirely unethical. It causes suffering to the hunted animal. Indeed this suffering exceeds much more in magnitude than the pleasure it gives the hunter! Mankind is supposed to be the protector and guardian of the planet and its inhabitants. Instead, post-industrial age, humans have treated our animals and our forests like expendable resources and garbage exclusively for their own selfish use and with complete disregard for everything else. The caveman of thousands of years ago had far more respect for our animals and forests and only killed to survive. Animal populations are collapsing and, inevitably, so will our civilization.

3)Trophy hunting does more harm to the very species it is supposed to protect

Trophy hunters make unsubstantiated claims that a small amount of controlled trophy hunting does not harm populations. However, this is not true. Trophy hunting can backfire and hurt the overall population of a species. Let’s take the example of lions. For trophy hunters, shooting the biggest and strongest adult male lion is the most desirable type of hunt by wealthy foreign hunters. However, it is a well-known fact that an adult male is the protector of his pride, protecting the females and other male offspring. If it gets killed, other male lions will attack and kill weaker lions in the pride to take over the leaderless pride, thus further reducing the numbers to the further detriment of the species. There are countless real-life examples of this phenomenon.

4)Does money from Trophy hunting help conservation?

There is no real proof that money raised by trophy hunting helps a species or local communities. I believe it is a misconception that revenues from trophy hunting help with conservation. This is what so-called” conservationists” would conveniently like the world to believe. On a broad scale, corrupt government officials, middlemen travel companies, and sports outfitters organizing the trophy hunt end up with the lion's share of the proceeds, and perhaps only a trickle goes to conservation and rural communities. I think the notion that trophy hunting helps conservation is like putting lipstick on a pig in a false attempt to hide its ugliness. The notion that Trophy hunting helps to protect the species is simply a guise to justify this gruesome practice. In all reality, it is simply providing a thrill to wealthy people who get a kick out of killing an endangered animal. True conservation activities should sustainably involve local communities, not benefit organizers, middlemen, and corrupt officials.

5)Trophy hunting undermines efforts to curb poaching.

What kind of mixed message are we sending poachers? It’s a double standard to come down hard on poachers who are simply trying to feed their families but greenlight wealthy thrill-seeking foreigners to hunt and kill animals. Poaching and trophy hunting is disgusting practices from a wildlife standpoint, especially for endangered species, which seem to attract an unusually large number of trophy hunters to hunt and kill these animals.

6)Trophy hunting is a lucrative big business making the case for even more trophy hunting

Because trophy hunting has become a big business, getting carried away and increasing quotas for the number of animals to hunt is easy. Corrupt politicians and organizers will find a way to make trophy hunting more lucrative for themselves at the detriment of the species.

7)Trophy hunting impairs genetic selection

As noted earlier, the most prized trophy hunts by wealthy foreigners granting them the most significant bragging and boasting rights are to take down the strongest males by targeting, for example, the ones with the most prominent horns of the most prominent tusks. This leaves only the less fit males in the population. Effectively, trophy hunting is weakening the DNA of a species over time.

Interestingly, even the original first nations inhabitants respected the leader of a pack, the strongest of the bunch. They would hunt the weaker animals for survival. Our modern civilization does not understand the importance of this simple but essential concept of genetic selection for the ongoing survival of a species.

8)Trophy hunting supports other harmful industries

Trophy hunting supports other industries that are detrimental to society by enabling weapons companies to make even more guns and fossil fuel companies provide dirty fuel for the long flights to take foreign trophy hunters to far away remote places to commit their heinous crimes against a harmless species already facing extinction.

These are just some of the reasons why trophy hunting should be banned entirely. So many humane ways can help protect a species facing extinction. Simple eco-tourism comes to

mind, where wealthy folks can take their families on safaris to see these animals in the natural setting. Shoot animals with your cameras, not rifles!

The extinction of a species is a global problem, not a local one. Imagine if every government across the globe donated a tiny tine minute fractional percentage of their tax revenues towards ending the extinction of species globally. This would make many resources available for conservation efforts to preserve a species. Far more than resorting to killing more of the same species!

I challenge anyone to argue otherwise and, more importantly, provide concrete evidence and data, to disprove my rationale for ending this cruel and inhumane practice of trophy hunting!

Munir Noorbhai

(Private citizen who wants to do right by animals before it is too late!)

Visit the discussion on Trophy Hunting:  https://www.mojostreaming.com/video/685/trophy-hunting-debate-episode-1


  1 year ago
The Unsolved Mystery of Elephants Death in Botswana

The death of hundreds of elephants in Botswana has been an unsolved mystery for a long time during this pandemic in Botswana. Most of these have shown the symptoms of dizziness and walking in circles before dropping dead face-first. Government officials quote that 281 elephants have been verified to be dead with this bizarre behavior, but the conservationists and the NGOs claim that the death toll is much higher.

Initially, wild life experts have omitted the possibility of tuberculosis and believe that the cause is beyond the known diseases. Though the death number does not sound serious in population perspective, it is absolutely critical to complete the diagnosis and have accurate results in order to avoid any foul play or before elephants succumb to more of such mysterious deaths.


Botswana has an estimated 130,000 Savanna elephants and is considered to be one of the last strongholds of species in Africa. The earlier estimations were to be around 350,000 and ivory poaching in 20th century has reduced the species to one third of them today. The thousand-square-mile to the northeast of Okavango Delta, which has witnessed the deaths of elephants has around 18,000 elephants roughly. The wildlife experts and veterans believe that the possible causes could be the ingestion of toxic bacteria into the water, viral infection from rodents in the area or a pathogen infection. Conservationists are also considering the possibility of poisoning by humans.

The investigating officials of the Botswana government had sent for the testing to the laboratories in Zimbabwe, South Africa, US and Canada as well. The wild life department made a press release that the deaths are probably due to natural toxins.

However, the officials have confirmed that the conclusion could not be made about the cause yet.  Authorities have so far ruled out anthrax, as well as poaching, as the tusks were found intact. They believe that some bacteria can naturally produce poison, particularly in stagnant water.

Elephants Without Borders (EWB) is a wildlife conservation charity that first flagged about these mysterious deaths. Their confidential report with references to 356 dead elephants was leaked to the public media in early July. The charity suspected that the deaths were not restricted to any specific age group or gender and has also highlighted that many live elephants have shown signs of weakness, lethargy and even disorientation.

Presence of green lush vegetation and the fact that waterholes in the vicinity are still full of rainwater eliminates the possibility of deaths due to dehydration or starvation. Though the blue green algae can be deadly when consumed along with water, elephants generally drink water from the middle of the water bodies, but not edges. But there has been a pre-historic mass elephant deaths due to Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) and this cause could only be substantiated with the laboratory results, which is still underway. The neurological symptoms like walking in circles suggests that anthrax poisoning is also a possibility.

The Anthrax bacteria occurs naturally in soil and elephants become infected if they have ingested contaminated soil or breathed in. Anthrax is known to be affecting wild life and domestic animals around the world.

Experts opinionated that it requires a detailed sampling of carcasses, soil and water in the delta area for an accurate explanation. But the challenge is the remoteness and the hot weather in the area which could have degraded the body, erasing important evidences, and scavenging animals which may eat organs making it extremely challenging for the examination. Despite the wildlife conservationists’ huge cry worldwide, there is still no confirmation on the absolute cause for the hundreds of elephant deaths.

  3 years ago