130925-studie-wildlife-comeback-in-europe

Rank Reason for change Description
1 Legislation Legal protection first started in Sweden in 1969 and
was gradually established in Norway between 1973
and 1983 [8, 29] .
2 Species management –
Compensation schemes
3 Other – Natural
recolonisation
Table 3.
Major reasons for
positive change in
the status of the
Wolverine in Europe.
A compensation scheme paying for reproductions
of Wolverines has been instrumental in the increase
of and expansion of the species in Sweden [30] .
Through population increases initiated by legal
protection, the species was able to spread naturally
into the forested landscapes in Sweden from which
it had been extirpated [28] .
to other areas [30] . In addition, direct compensation
is in place for depredation events [32] .
The situation is, however, very different in
Sweden; no hunting is permitted, and although
lethal control has been carried out in special
cases as a final conflict-mitigating measure, it
is believed to be of limited importance at the
population level [5] . In reindeer husbandry areas, a
conservation performance payment system using
a positive reinforcement approach was implemented
in 1996 [32] . Under this system, 200,000
Swedish Kronor are paid to reindeer herding
districts for each documented Wolverine reproduction
irrespective of predation level, both to
cover the costs of depredation and disturbance,
and to encourage herders to take actions that
decrease losses [33] . While this has not prevented
illegal killings (poaching is the main source of
mortality [5] ), adult females have lower mortality,
which leads to a reproduction rate which is twice
as high as in similar habitat in Norway [30] . The
scheme is believed to have been instrumental in
the increase in population size of 3.8% per year and
the concurrent expansion since its introduction [30] .
However, it is not known whether acceptance
among those affected has actually increased or
whether it is the associated extensive monitoring
needed to verify reproductions that is acting as a
poaching deterrent [30] .
Recent developments
The Scandinavian Wolverine population appears
to be stable at present [12] and a continuous range
across Sweden and Norway [27, 28] has been created
through natural spread. Highly cooperative
projects have been on-going since the 1990s in
Sweden [20] and Norway [18] , and large-scale research
is now also being undertaken in Finland [21] .
However, the high level of culling in some areas of
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