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Outside the snow drifts lazily from a leaden sky. The icy temperatures are tempered by the smouldering wood stove in the corner and the smell of strong coffee accompanied by a pall of cigarette smoke, hangs in the air. Six sombre Norwegians sit close to the fire, rarely speaking but always with an eye to the window.
A sudden crackle from the radio changes the scene instantly. My lack of Norwegian precludes me from the finer details but within minutes, the house is empty. I guess that a lynx has been tracked, found and shot.
Sure enough, in fading light, two figures emerge from the dense spruce forest with the lifeless body of a young female lynx. She is number three from a quota of 12 animals sanctioned this year in Nord-Trondelag, an administrative region of scattered farmsteads and fragmented forest. Norway’s lynx population is estimated at 500 to 600.
The majority of lynx hunters in this part of Norway are farmers who, in spite of a more generous subsidy than they would receive under EU membership, remain convinced of continued persecution from ill-informed urbanites. Uncompromising treatment of predators is seen as a statement in preserving their status – social and economic.
A two-hour drive east across the Swedish border and the story is very different. Here in the boreal forests of the north, it is EU legislation that governs predator policy and coupled
