Finland's brown bear population has fallen for the second year in a row, according to figures published on Monday by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).
The institute's latest report — published well ahead of the hunting season that begins in August — estimated that there were between 1,740 and 1,925 bears in Finland in 2022.
This figure represents a decline in the population of about 20 percent compared to 2021.
Finland's bear population hit a 20-year-high in 2020, when the institute estimated that there were between 2,360 and 2,470 individuals, according to Luke researcher Samuli Heikkinen.
"However, the decline of the population has been uneven: the number of bears decreased most clearly in eastern Finland," Heikkinen said in a press release.
He added that about 85 percent of the bears hunted in Finland between 2019 and 2022 were shot less than 100 kilometres from Finland's eastern border.
The institute's report noted that Finland has seen a significant increase in the number of bear hunting over the last four years, and this is likely to cause populations to fall even further in coming years.
Finland's bear hunting quota was cut by about a third last year, when the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry set the season limit at just under 350 bears, down from 460 the previous year.
Finnish authorities have issued more hunting permits in recent years in efforts to control the growth of the bear population, as the number of bears in Finland doubled between 2007 and 2020.
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