Strengthening the Finnish wolf population and getting the animals spread out over a broader area could be a tough task.
Helsinki University researchers Jukka Bisi and Sami Kurki ran into some surprisingly strong anti-wolf sentiments in south-western Finland.
The two men studied Finnish attitudes towards wolves in 2005.
Still ingrained in the collective memory of people in the south-western reaches of the country are stories of children killed by wolves in the 19th century.
In Eastern Finland there was a greater degree of familiarity with wolves, but there, too, there were calls for reducing the population through hunting.
The fear of wolves is quite common, according to the two scientists, even if it is made to seem somewhat irrational by the observation that not one person in the entire Nordic region has been killed by a wolf for a hundred years.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.4.2008
