Close to the tiny Finnish village of Saaravaara, bloody tracks lead through the snow to the frozen carcass of an eight-month-old male reindeer lying on its side, its neck torn, its underbelly ripped open.
Within minutes, Ilmari Schepel, a local agriculture official, identified the culprit: a wolf. His evidence was the shape of the bite to the animal's throat and the belly tear; wolves are particularly fond of reindeer intestines.
This town, a 20-minute drive from Finland's border with Russia and more than 600km northeast of Helsinki, is on the front line of Finland's wolf wars. The fight pits backers of EU regulations, which are meant to halt sharp drops in the population of wolves and other endangered predators across Europe, against the roughly 7,000 reindeer herders whose livelihoods are threatened by increased attacks on their animals.
Finland, which joined the EU in 1995, came under criticism that its hunting practices did not mesh with European habitat directives. So in 2001, the Finnish government tightened its hunting laws to meet EU standards. Finnish law now states that every kill must be covered by a permit and restricts the number of permits to about 10 percent of a particular predator's known numbers.
Seven years later, the populations of wolves, lynxes, brown bears and wolverines in Finland have grown substantially, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Helsinki. In this area, the number of wolves has roughly tripled since 1996, and attacks on reindeer herds have increased more than threefold in the past 10 years.
The level of anger about the hunting restrictions is high here. In one example, Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner who insisted on the hunting crackdown to protect the endangered predators, received a bullet in the mail from an irate hunter.
Asko Moilanen, 40, a third-generation herder, said because of his losses to predators over the past three years, his income from reindeer has been reduced to almost nothing.
"Either we should be allowed to hunt or they should pay compensation for the real losses," he said. "It affects my whole life and my family."
Moilanen, who is married with four children, depends on his wife's earnings to stay afloat.
"The people are poor here, but I am a beggar. Last year on my tax return, I declared just 100 dollars earned from herding," he said.
Herders complain that state compensation for lost reindeer -- each carcass fetches about US$439 -- is inadequate because it fails to take account the remains of those that are never found. The Agriculture and Forestry Ministry says the herders are fairly compensated.
In much of Finland, reindeer hold a hallowed place in the collective imagination, perhaps akin to the buffalo in the history of the American West. Farther north toward the Arctic Circle, Lapland is the supposed home of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer. Less sentimental Finns enjoy eating reindeer: fried, sauteed, smoked or cold.
For its part, the European Commission says that, under the European Habitats Directive, wolves have the right to protection.
"Men and wolves have lived together for centuries, and there is no reason why they should not continue to do so," said Barbara Helfferich, a spokeswoman for Dimas, the European environment commissioner. "We need to ensure coexistence and protect the species according to the law."
The area around Suomussalmi is just north of the line that marks the country's reindeer herding zone. Before Finnish law was amended in 2001, there were few restrictions on hunting of predators here.
On a recent day in the snow-covered forest, Kalervo Rytinki, a retired policeman and herder, demonstrated how wolves are now hunted by uncoiling a rope marked with small black flags that he tied around trees. The rope -- known as a flag line -- enclosed an area where a pack was known to be roaming. Because the line was dipped in a pungent oil made from elk antlers, the wolves would be reluctant to cross the line.
Gradually, the hunters reduced the area enclosed by the flag line to trap the wolves.
Though herders here had permits to kill a total of three wolves, Rytinki said the hunt was halted because the wolf pack numbered at least nine and there was a risk that more than three reindeer would be killed before the wolves were trapped. He said there was no illegal hunting here because anyone breaking the law could lose their rifle, face fines related to income and go to jail for up to two years.
While those hunters were law abiding, some conservationist say the same cannot be said for the country as a whole. Matti Nieminen, a spokesman for the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, said there was too much illegal hunting of wolves and that licensing should focus on the wolves that kill most local animals.
According to Ilpo Kojola, a senior research scientist at the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute, mortality among wolves runs at about 20 percent a year. Nine out of 10 dead wolves are killed by humans and, of those, about 30 percent die in illegal hunts, he said.
Finland last year lost a court case brought by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, which ruled that Finns failed to protect wolves from hunters. The commission is expected to review the case and decide in the next two weeks whether the authorities in Helsinki now protect wolves and other endangered predators sufficiently.
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