Killing Wolves to Save Them? Legal Responses to ‘Tolerance Hunting’ in the European Union and United States

• Author: Yaffa Epstein
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12188
• Published date: 01 April 2017
• Date: 01 April 2017

Killing Wolves to Save Them? Legal Responses

to ‘Tolerance Hunting’ in the European Union

and United States

Yaffa Epstein*

Wolves are protected by law in both the United States

(US) and European Union (EU). These laws restrict

the harming or killing of individual members of pro-

tected species, but allow it in selective circumstances,

such as when killing some individuals would benefit

the species. In both unions, some states have argued

that allowing the public hunting of wolves would in

fact benefit the species by improving social tolerance

for wolves, a claim that is currently the subject of con-

troversy among scientists. In the absence of clear evi-

dence that hunting is favourable for wolf populations,

US courts have repeatedly struck down policies that

allowed it. While hunting wolves to achieve their social

acceptability is likely to also violate EU law, the EU

court has not yet resolved the question and hunting for

social acceptance continues in some Member States,

such as Sweden and Finland. This article contrasts

these legal responses to social ‘tolerance hunting’and

argues that the Habitats Directive should not be inter-

preted to allow tolerance hunting of strictly protected

species. It then uses the contrasting legal situations to

engage with the claim that the EU has become more

‘precautionary’than the US on environmental matters.

INTRODUCTION

The legal protections for wolves that have been enacted

in the United States (US) and European Union (EU)

have successfully led to an increase in wolf populations

in both unions.

1

This success has proved tenuous, as

these recovering wolf populations have been met with

hostility from some members of the human population,

leading to political conflicts and, too often, the illegal

killing of wolves.

2

Several Americanstates and EU Mem-

ber States have sought to allow the public to participate

in legal hunting seasons of wolves with the stated goal of

improving public tolerance for wolves.

3

This would in

turn, these statesargued, increase wolves’‘cultural carry-

ing capacity’, that is, the number of individual members

of a species that can survive in a given habitat in light of

both biological and human factors.

4

States used this

argument that allowing the killing of wolves would be

positive for theirconservation to further argue that hunt-

ing was permissibleunder restrictive conservationlaws.

However, whether allowing the public to hunt protected

or vulnerable species in fact increases public tolerance

for the presence of a species has been the subject of con-

siderable scientific disagreement. A review of prior

studies published in 2009 found a lack of evidence sup-

porting that conclusion.

5

More recent publications

showed that attitudes towards wolves did not become

more positive after legal hunting seasons in Wisconsin,

6

and suggested that culling by wildlife officials intended

to reduce poaching may in fact have the opposite effect.

7

Other reviews and studies have reached the opposite

conclusion, arguing that allowing hunting improves

attitudes towards conservation and thus benefits

*Corresponding author.

Email: yaffa.epstein@jur.uu.se

1

A. Trouwborst, ‘Global Large Carnivore Conservation and Interna-

tional Law’, 24:7 Biodiversity and Conservation (2015), 1567; Y.

Epstein, ‘Population-Based Species Management across Legal

Boundaries: The Bern Convention, Habitats Directive, and the Gray

Wolf in Scandinavia’, 25:4 Georgetown International Environmental

Law Review (2012), 549; M. Williams, ‘Lessons from the Wolf Wars:

Recovery v. Delisting Under the Endangered Species Act’, 27:2 Ford-

ham Environmental Law Review (2015), 106, at 133–136.

2

See, e.g., G. Chapron and A. Treves, ‘Blood Does Not Buy Goodwill:

Allowing Culling Increases Poaching of a Large Carnivore’, 283:1830

Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2016), 20152939 (noting that

several quantitative studies showed that poaching had a large nega-

tive impact on several carnivore populations); O. Liberg et al., ‘Shoot,

Shovel and Shut Up: Cryptic Poaching Slows Restoration of a Large

Carnivore in Europe’, 279:1730 Proceedings of the Royal Society B

(2012), 910.

3

E.g., Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Management Plan

for the Wolf Population in Finland (F€

orvaltningsplanen f€

or vargstam-

men) (2015), at 14 (in Swedish, stating that the ban on hunting had led

to public approval for illegal killing, and that the purpose of allowing

legal hunting was to respond to negative views of wolves and thus

reduce illegal killing); see also Sierra Club v. Clark, 577 F.Supp. 783,

at 790 (discussed below).

4

L.H. Carpenter,D.J. Decker and J.F. Lipscomb,‘Stakeholder Accept-

ance Capacity in Wildlife Management’, 5:3 Human Dimensions of

Wildlife (2000), at 8.

5

A. Treves, ‘Hunting for Large Carnivore Conservation’, 46:6 Journal

of Applied Ecology (2009), 1350.

6

C. Browne-Nu~

nez et al., ‘Tolerance of Wolves in Wisconsin: A

Mixed-Methods Examination of Policy Effects on Attitudes and Behav-

ioral Inclinations’, 189 Biological Conservation (2015), 59.

7

See G. Chapron and A. Treves, n. 2 above.

ª2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

19

RECIEL 26 (1) 2017. ISSN 2050-0386 DOI: 10.1111/reel.12188

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Review of European Community & International Environmental Law