Woman arrested after 3 suspected wolves were found

This is corrected direct translation from police announcement made of the case.

The police is investigating: A woman is suspected of acquiring wild wolves for breeding dogs

16.01.2019 at 14.23Helsinki

At the beginning of January, the police caught a hint that a person living in Kanta-Häme was in possession of possibly authentic wolves. The possession of a wild animal is a crime. An investigative group on animal-related crimes, which has been operating at the Helsinki Police Department since last autumn, began to investigate the clue.
- It turned out that the person has delivered the animal or animals to his acquaintances to be "hidden". In the end, we ended up with a search in three different locations in southern Finland. We found a total of three animals whose experts thought they were genuine wolves. The estimate was made on the basis of both the appearance and behavior of the animals, says Anne Hietala , Vice President, Investigations at the Helsinki Police Department.
Home searches were made on 9.1.2019. The Helsinki District Court arrested the main suspect on Saturday, January 12, 2019. A woman is suspected of comitting a serious animal offense and a nature conservation crime. Also, two acquaintances who had taken the animals to hide for her were suspected of nature conservation crime. One of them is also suspected of animal cruelty.

Three animals had to be euthanized immediately

All three animals suspected of being wolves had to be euthanized immediately because of their suffering and poor condition. The animals were timid, and they could not be handled by humans. All the animals were visibly stressed and suffering in the places they were kept.
- Two animals were kept in a dark outdoor sauna where there was no food or water available at the time of home search. Experts estimate that keeping these animals alive would have been only a prolongation of suffering. When there was no information on the origin of the animals, euthanasia was the only option. Fear of unspecified, wild-looking and timid animals escaping out in wild was also a serious threat, Hietala explains.
Euthanized animals are subjected to dna testing to ensure that they were genuine wolves. The results have not yet come. Since 2016, imports of F1 to F4 wolf-dogs have also been banned in Finland.
The preliminary investigation has revealed that the main suspect has either brought the animals to Finland from Russia or taken them from the wild. The police suspect that the motive has been the crossing of so-called wolf-dogs. Wolf-dogs are wolf and dog crosses or offspring of such crossings.
- The captured main suspect has been raising wolf-dogs for years. She had more than 60 dogs at home, some of them wolf-dogs and some other breeds of dogs. There were also other animals on the farm. It has come to the attention of the police that the suspect has kept the animals in inadequate conditions for years and treatment has been inappropriate according to witnesses. The investigation has revealed such things as she is being suspected of a serious animal cruelty.
The police are currently investigating how imported animals have been brought into the country and whether there is any reason to suspect economic crime. Pre-examination is quite extensive and only in the early stages. There is no further information on this case at this stage of the investigation.

Been a while..

Hey all. It's been a quite a while since I last time updated here. Reason for this was my own well-being, as work and actively following/engaging in the wolf issues exhausted me completely. Thus I took a complete off-grid approach on everything wolf related. Most likely I'm going to continue this way, since momentarily resurfacing still suck my energies dry even after almost a year of recuperation.

Reason for resurfacing in the world of wolf topics was that wolves did some damage just 6 kilometers away from my home. Thus to make sure I'm aware of their movements in my surrounding area (since I happen to own some sheep and a horse).

Some updates I'm gonna give to you now are the updated consensus figures, some legislative stuff and an interesting new behavior wolves here have been exhibiting.


First the estimate:

In March 2018 it was estimated that there were 165-190 wolves in Finland. This estimate was 10% larger than year before. In the estimate the packs that are shared with Russia are conted only by half of their strength. If these wolves are counted completely in to Finnish population the amount of wolves was 180-205 individuals.

The amount of packs that completely or mostly resided in Finland was 20. This is 30% larger than year before. The packs residing on both sides of the border was 5 strong, two packs drop from the previous year.
Territories inhabited by 2 wolves (pair) was 15 out of which 2 were living in the border area.
Also 3 territories were left open whether there were 2 or 3 wolves residing in the area.

The distribution of wolf packs differed significantly from previous year. The amount of wolves residing in the western wolf management zone rose from 47% to 68%. In this western management zone there were 16 likely dennings where as in the Eastern wolf management zone there were 9 likely dennings, the border pack included. the pack size was slightly larger in the west (5,1 indv.) than the east 4,4 indv.)

The known mortality between 1st of August 2017 and 31st of March 2018 was 25. Out of these there were 2 alphas, one male and one female (from different packs). Out of all there were 18 males and 7 females.
The cause of death were: 13 killed with damage based permits (1 alpha female), 5 were killed by traffic/collision, 3 were killed out of necessity (threatening behavior against humans etc.) 3 by order of the police and 1 unknown cause of death. (an alpha male).



On the legislative stuff.

-The cap of  wolves that can be hunted per year was not given this year since this kind of cap doesn't seem to have any kind of directioning effect since the permits given out are solely based on damages and thus the cap doesn't have any real function.

-The management plan is being revised and will be updated in the beginning of 2019.

-The legislation regarding damage compensations is being revised, since the funds are not enough to cover all large carnivore caused damages as it is. The largest part of the compensation money goes to the reindeer herders since most of the damages are done to reindeer and by wolverine. Also a goverment regulation called Lex Halla has given some reindeer herding areas larger compensations than others (up to three times as large a sum than the value of the lost animal). Thus Lex Halla is being ended and the compensation is redirected so that the dog owners shall get full compensation and is funds are running low the capping will be shared by the reindeer herding compensations instead of all recipients of the compensations.


And the behavioral quirk:

Wolves in the Southern Osthrobothnia have started to attack and kill animals in the fur farms. Whether this is a behavior of a single pack or couple of them is yet unclear to me. However to this day wolves have either directly killed, injured or stressed to death at least 9 silver foxes on 3 different farms.
I've never heard of such behavior before, although wolves are known to kill mesopredators in general.

The wolf estimate of 2017

Jay! It's finally out :D

Shortly put, the wolf population is estimated to have been between 150 and180 individuals in March this year. This estimate is 25% lower than the estimate last year (2016)
There are 14 packs that are wholly or mostly in Finland. (We share a number of packs with our eastern neighbor, Russia). 7 packs move across the border and are labeled as bordering packs.
18 territory marking wolf pairs out of which 3 are living in the border area.
Also in three territories it was uncertain whether area has 2 or 3 wolves, thus uncertainty of pack status.

The location of packs (green) border packs (grey), pairs (yellow) and the uncertain ones (orange)

The reason why the estimate took so long to come out, was that Luke (Natural Resources Institute Finland) researchers were using DNA analysis this time to make better estimate. The collecting of scats and analyzing them took time.

The amount packs with GPS collared wolves in them is 6, the amount of individuals collared is 13.

Reasons for decline are multiple and uncertain. Partly due the DNA testing merging some border packs in one pack (previously thought to be 2 different packs) and loss of breeding individuals in the hunting year 2015-2016 when anthropomorphic mortality rose unexpectedly high ( 75 individuals in total out of which 13 were breeding individuals).

The anthropomorphic mortality in the hunting year 2016-2017 was 57 individuals, out of which 6 were breeding individuals (1 male, 5 females).
Out of these, amount of wolves killed with regular exempt permits (given to prevent more depredations) was 15, the management exempt permits 26, by the order of the police 7, traffic killed 7, 1  by poaching.
One wolf died due accident, rising the total known mortality to 58 individuals.

The amount of pairs in wolf population was high in March (52% of all territories) when it was just 35% in March 2016. This could mean that there are now several new packs in Finland, since around 60% of pairs succeed to breed in their first spring together. (If interested that would mean 10,8 more packs formed this year, rising the amount of packs to 24-27, when counting in the 3 uncertain packs).

What's happening on the wolf front in Finland

As spring time has come, were waiting to hear latest info on population estimates. Usually the estimates have come around February-March, but since DNA-studies have been taken in to use as an aid to give more accurate estimates, the announcement date has been pushed back to May-June.
So we still have to wait bit more to find out how wolf population has reacted to the managment hunts and the unforeseen death toll of 78 individuals in season 2015-2016.

While waiting the estimates to finish, there are few things happening that are worth mentioning.

First, a so-called "wolf-rebellion" has taken place, where a group of people are willing to pay "tail-money" to Russians, who kill wolves that live both sides of the border (since problematic animals can't be removed legally in Finland, the problem wolves can be dealt on the other side of the border in Russia, where hunting wolves is legal and wolves have had bounty on them before.
Reasons for this movement is aforementioned lack of legal options to remove problem individuals and packs but also a certain worry over the wild forest reindeer, which numbers in it's former core area has been dwindling due heavy predation.

Second form of rebellion is seen in several parts of Finland, where the volunteer hunters who have formed the Large Game executive assistance force, are ending their contracts with police, since wolves have become such a large threat to the dogs used to track injured large game animals (moose and large carnivores) that the owners do not want to take that risk during training or in actual search situation.

Then there is the ongoing dispute over purity of our wolves. Official records recognize only 3 individuals from the past which have been wolf-dog hybrids. Others consider that the change in appearance and behavior of wolves in the past decade or so is due dog genes contaminating our wolf population and some have gone as far as claiming the whole population being nothing but hybrid mutts.
There is an ongoing pro-grad study in University of Oulu, where a new method is being developed to help recognize hybrids more easily. This will also include making a family tree out all the existing samples from the past 150 years.
(Link to the researcher Jenni Harmoinen's profile page: http://www.oulu.fi/wildlifegenomics/node/34127)

Update on wolf hunting and licences 19th of Jan.

Here is a small update on the situation:

As of 17th of Jan (permits are made available for public to view 2 days after decision) the amount of wolves requested to be hunted totaled at 69 individuals.
Out of these 7 were requested and given to reindeer herding area. (no quota)
As for the rest of Finland, 62 individuals were requested to be hunted (quota was set at 53 individuals).

Permits were granted for 20 wolves (as of the 17th), out of which 13 were granted to Northern-Karelia. (amount requested from N-K was 44 wolves).

As of 19th (today) 10 wolves have been killed since the beginning of the year. 1 was removed by the order of the police as the male wolf was suffering from a mange and 9 individuals have been shot with exempt permits, all of which have had a tendency to visit yards (definition for a yard visit is wolf moving less than 100 meters from an inhabited house, animal shed or farm.)

Of the first 2 hunting permits

The Finnish Wildlife Agency has given 2 permits (each having licences to kill 2 individuals) to hunt wolves. Here I'll do a small summary on the reasons behind granting the permits.


First the one was given to the so called Renko pack.

This pack is situated in Kanta-Häme, area with rather high population density (~32 km² )
The pack in question has made visits to yard areas (less than 100 meters from a inhabited house) 65 times between 1st of June and 4th of January. Amount of wolves doing these visits has ranged from 1 to 8 at a time.
There has been 2 deterring events ordered by the police, last one was done 4th of December after which wolves have continued to visit in yards (16 times).
After the beginning of June, the emergency center has gotten 6 emergency calls concerning the wolves.

The second one was given to the so called Höljäkkä pack.

This pack is situated in the border area of Lieksa and Nurmes. Area is not densely populated in general, but the pack's core territory is in the middle of densely populated area consisting of several villages.
This pack has made almost 100 visits to yards between the 1 st of June and 2nd of January. Last year, two female pups were shot from the pack and the alpha female produced a large litter this year making the pack size rise to 9. Two individuals have died from this pack due collisions with train. (young individuals)
This pack has killed 1 dog and mauled another. Also one dog was killed in the near by area, but not by the pack in question.
This pack has other packs bordering it, having 8 packs in a 100km radius.
The moose hunting is not conducted in the area due low densities of moose.
Extra school rides have been taken in to use to safeguard children's travel to school and back. These cost 11 345 euros per month (in Lieksa) and 3500 euros (in Nurmes) per year.
One wolf was killed by the order of the police in the area, a malnurished male, weighing only 15 kg. ( 27th of November). Most likely this individual was not part of the pack in question,


Both permits state that it is recommended to take young individual from the pack and to avoid killing a reproducing individual.
The permit is in effect for 21 days.

On wolf hunt between 22nd Dec -16 and 31st of July 2017

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry gave out a decree ruling that maximum amount of wolves killed between giving of the decree (22nd of December 2016) and end of the hunting year 2016-2017 (31st of July 2017) is 53 wolves.
This is not a amount that is target, but an upper limit after which no more permits can be given by game management.

The amount will include ALL known mortality, so every vehicle collision, police permit, inter species kill is counted. 

The first one to be taken from this quota was a male wolf shot since it was suffering from a serious case of mange and was ruled to be killed to end it's sufferings.

In the first week of January total of  18 permit applications were made, out of which 2 were accepted, others will need extra info and will be re-viewed in the second week of Jan.

These 2 permits were given to areas of Renko (2 wolves) and area consisting of parts from Lieksa and Nurmes. (2 wolves.) Both permits are targeting packs doing frequent yard visits and showing lessened fear towards humans. Permits have terms that limit the usage to young and harm causing individuals, usage of dogs during the hunt, organizing the hunt and amount of people to take part in the hunt.

The "mid-term" evaluation given to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry estimates that there are 32-38 packs in Finland currently (reproduced packs).

Amount of wolves does not seem to have changed drastically from the year 2015, the final estimate will be given in March.

The packs in December. Blue ones contain 8 or more wolves, green ones with red circle around them are still uncertain.