Large Carnivores

The growth in the amount of large carnivores (wolf, bear, wolverine and lynx) since the beginning of 2000s has had a significant effect to reindeer herding. Herders try to ease the pressure carnivores cause through extra herding and taking reindeer into fences during winter. This has added to the total expenses and weakened the profitability of the profession. Loosing breeding reindeer is a particularly big financial loss to the herder.

In Finland, the resources for thorough research to count and monitor all the large carnivores as well as recognizing all the individual carnivores with DNA-samples is not sufficient. The estimates of the amounts of the large carnivores are mostly based on the announcements that contact persons around Finland make to the TASSU-system. There are not many contact persons in Northern Finland hence the system does not reflect the real situation. This also means that the observations are not comparable with Southern Finland.

Suurpedot.fi

Offical information on Finland’s large carnivores

Project on large carnivores

The website (in Finnish) and guide from the project that ended in May 2014.