By Jonathan M. Feldman, May 25, 2022

Political Parties Assassinating Wolves

In this time of militarist juggernaut and knowledge resistance, in which reality dissolves before the structured superficiality of experts, journalists and politicians, it is therapeutic to reveal the wreckless irrationality of society. Case in point: Swedish politicians’ assault on species diversity. While many have been participating in various conferences and workshops to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stockholm UN conference on the environment, the Swedish parliament has been increasing the changes of species extinction of the Swedish wolf. As one website explains, “Stockholm+50 will commemorate the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and celebrate 50 years of global environmental action.” How did the Swedish parliament commemorate the idea of biological diversity? Last week, SVT reports, “the Riksdag decided that the number of wolves should be reduced from the current 400 to 170 wolves.” The news story quotes Karin Nalbin, chair of LRF Jönköping who runs a farm outside Mullsjö, who approved the decision. Nalbin says, it “is unusual for the wolf to take cattle, but they scare them so we have to hunt them over half the area.” The story says “animals…are not allowed to graze due to fear of the wolf.”

The political parties pushing for wolf elimination are some of the same parties that have championed military expansionism: the Moderate Party (M), the Swedish Democrats (SD), the Christian Democrats (KD), and the Center Party (C). The Social Democratic Minister of Agriculture Anna-Caren Sätherberg “does not want to say exactly which level [of wolf population] is right, but points out that Sweden must continue to live up to the EU’s species and habitat directive on protecting endangered species.” She said, “We see that the wolf population is increasing every year and we want to see if we can reach the goals of the Riksdag with this. Now we can see that the level of conflict has increased and acceptance has decreased.” Acceptance from whom? Has anyone argued against the human population increasing every year, something which pushes up against ecosystem balance? Never!

In 2019, Jason Hickle reported that: “Ecologists say that a sustainable level of resource use is about 7 tonnes of material stuff per person per year. Scandinavians consume on average more than 32 tonnes per year. That is four and a half times over the sustainable level, similar to the United States, driven by overconsumption of everything from meat to cars to plastic.” Will the parliament call for reducing the far more dangerous (to the ecosystem) human population? Never. I am not saying that the parliament should engage in Malthusian policies to reduce the human population, although some may make a strong case for that. Rather, my argument is that the wolf elimination program is totally aburd.

Note: Wolves do not use fossil fuels as part of their life style. They don’t drive petroleum-based automobiles. They don’t even require electric charging stations. Unlike the JAS Gripen, wolves don’t attack the Swedish water supply.

The party championing NATO also champions wolf elimination. Let us let this party speak for itself: John Widegren, a spokesman for the Moderate Party, “believes that the Riksdag’s decision to reduce the wolf population to 170 individuals was made on the Moderates’ initiative and is critical of the Social Democrats voting against this.” Here we have yet another example of a right-wing party pushing the Social Democrats to be mediocre. SVT cites Benny Gäfwert who is a “predator expert at the WWF” who “is critical of sharply reducing the number of wolves in Sweden.” He says the the 170 level “is not based on any scientific facts” and argued that “such a small number would be far below what WWF considers necessary for the wolf population to be viable.” He continues, “in wild populations, unforeseen things can happen and then the level 170 is too low. We have a problem when it comes to the genetics of wolves and the smaller the wolf population, the greater the effect that fluctuations have on the population in terms of genetic status.”

Species Elimination as the Politics of Scarcity and Military Opportunity Costs

Why are the wolf-eliminating-parties absurd? Well each one of these parties supported joining NATO for rather dubious reasons about which I have written at length. These parties all favored massive military spending, the type that expands the Swedish military budget and represents a huge economic cost. Trading Economics, using SIPRI data, reports that “military expenditure in Sweden increased to 6234 USD Million in 2020 from 5840 USD Million in 2019.”

How much does just one JAS Gripen cost? In 2019, Svenska Dagbladet reported that 60 Jas Gripen cost 36.8 billion SEK. That means each plane cost 613,333,333 SEK. So one plane would pay for 306,667 sheep in Sweden using the estimate of 2000 SEK per sheep, which is in the mid-range of sheep prices using international standards. In contrast, in 2017 Marit Widman in a study published by the Swedish University of Agricultural Scientists that: “There are around 600,000 sheep in Sweden, and 500–600 are killed by carnivores each year” citing data from another report. In another study done with colleagues (published in 2019), Widman concluded: “Our results then suggest that, on average, indirect costs for an attacked herd are 2.3 and 1.9 times the compensated costs for conventional and summer-pasture farms, respectively. If indirect costs occur for both livestock producers who have experienced a predator attack, and those who have not but whose farm is in a carnivore-dense area, it is not sufficient to increase the compensation per killed and injured animal. Instead, a government-financed flat-rate compensation per ewe in the sheep herd could be better.” In sum, one factor that may encourage farmers to turn against wolves is that they are under-compensated by the goverment.

The under-compensation is part of a scarcity politics that encourages an under-subsidy of farmers who then try to eliminate wolves. Where could the money come from to pay farmers? This money clearly could come from the military budget. Yet, all political parties (to a varying degree) push for military budget increases and a move towards NATO which antagonizes Russia and leads to further military budget increases. The number of sheep which could be generated from the spending on just a single Gripen plane 306,667 could pay for roughly 500 times the number of sheep lost in a given year (600). It is for this reason that political parties backing wolf elimination are totally absurd. Swedish politicians voting for absurd military budgets fail to recognize not only the opportunity costs against fighting climate change, but also the very limits to military power itself. Instead, they support species extinction and gross militarism.

For farmers who feel that their animals are “stressed out” by wolves, one could establish some kind of drone, fencing, or other separation program to offer further segregation or protection from wolves. There is plenty of money in the national budget for such efforts by supporting the necessary military budget cuts. While some hunters may believe that they have common interests with the military, given elements of “gun culture,” the military budget represents a high costs against farmers and preservers of species variety alike.