Har vargen gynnsam bevarandestatus i Sverige?

Sammanfattning: The hunting of wolves has been very hotly debated in Sweden lately. The local county administrative boards have, to an increasing extent, decided that licensed wolf-hunting should be allowed in the various counties of Sweden. The decisions have almost always been appealed to the courts. The main question in the trials concerning these decisions have been whether the decision to hunt wolves are compatible with EU-law in general, and specifically with The Habitats Directive. Within this judgement lies the question whether the Swedish wolf-population could be regarded as having reached favourable conservation status. This question is not by itself determinant whether the hunting should be allowed, but it is an important parameter in the judgement. This essay is aiming to give an account of whether the population of wolves in Sweden has reached favourable conservation status. This has been done by going through the Habitats-directive and its guidance documents, and applying the criteria from these to the Swedish conditions as they are expressed in the official reports of the Swedish government. The Swedish Riksdag has previously decided that the wolf-population of Sweden should be regarded as having reached favourable conservation status, and this has been a basis for the newly given judgements from the Swedish courts regarding the hunting of wolves. My conclusion is however, that it is very doubtful whether the Swedish wolf-population should be regarded as having reached a favourable conservation status in Sweden. I reach this conclusion mainly based on two reasons. Firstly, there is very much disagreement as to how large the Swedish population of wolves should be to fulfil the criteria for favourable conservation status. Secondly, and more seriously, the genetic variability of the Swedish wolf-population is extremely bad, with very high levels of inbreeding. Both these issues makes me doubt that the EU-court would make the same judgement as the Swedish courts and Riksdag has done.