Predator tracks
By Mikko-Pekka Heikkinen
There is a paw print in the snow. It is 12 centimetres wide, and the toes and claws can be clearly discerrned. The May sun has softened the snow, but the beast has stayed on top of the wet bank.
It is a bear that has come through here - coming from the east, and moving west.
The place is the municipality of Salla in the east of Finnish Lapland, in the Tuntsa wilderness. Heikki Säkkinen, a wilderness inspector for Metsähallitus, which administers state-owned forest areas, measures the footprint, on the shore of Ulmakkolampi pond and looks at the cliff from where the animal has slid down to get to the ice.
“It looks like it has really come down fast”, Säkkinen says.
The tracks lead to a birch. The tree has a ribbon placed there by the Border Guard, forbidding people to move around in the border zone. Russia begins on the other side of the hill, not much more than a snowball’s throw away.
The tape is partly in tatters, after being clawed by the bear.
Säkkinen estimates that the animal may have been about three years old. He ponders what might have made the bear claw at the ribbon - its yellow colour, perhaps?
It might be nice to ponder that, but it doesn’t really matter much. What is important is that the bear appears to have been on the move without bullet holes or without anyone in pursuit.
Looking after the well-being of the bears is one part of Heikki Säkkinen’s job description. It is his job to make sure than nobody shoots large predators without special permission.
A joint effort by police, the Border Guard, and Metsähallitus is under way, with supervisors looking for suspicious snowmobile tracks in the forest, as well as hidden signs of kills, or other indications of poaching.
Bear hunting is not allowed in the spring, but many hunt them anyway. Poaching large predators has increased in recent years.
Poachers are using increasingly brutal means to kill predators. Recently in the Salla wilderness, balls of foam soaked in blood were found, which swell in the intestinal tract of the animal, killing it if it eats it. People are good at inventing such vile tricks.
The blood balls are intended mainly for wolverines, which are very endangered predators.
Säkkinen starts his snowmobile and turns it toward the north. The bleak, uneven landscape stretches out to the horizon, comprising young planted pine trees and spruce. Säkkinen drives his snowmobile along the uninhabited wilderness a total of about 6,000 kilometres a year.
For an outside observer, Säkkinen’s task seems nearly impossible.
There are only three wilderness inspectors in all of Finnish Lapland, including Säkkinen. Each of them supervises adherence to rules of hunting and fishing in an area of about 15,000 square kilometres. The territory of one inspector is about 70 times the size of the surface area of the city of Helsinki.
The task is made no easier by the fact that many local people seem to be hostile toward the wardens, including Kari Väyrynen, the municipal mayor of Salla.
Väyrynen chops up his vegetable patty in the main village of Salla. He does not like it that the police and the Border Guard, in addition to Metsähallitus, are going after the poachers. The Mayor feels that game supervision is taking place with far too much force. He thinks that officials should stick to their main task, which is helping people and looking after their safety.
Kari Väyrynen also feels that the state is more concerned with the security of large predators in Lapland than with that of the local people.
The reality in the Salla area in the east of Finnish Lapland - in the municipalities of Salla, Savukoski, Kemijärvi, and Pelkosenniemi - is this: only one police patrol comprising two officers is on call for nine months of the year. The area covers more than 18,000 square kilometres - an area nearly half the size of the country of Denmark.
The east of Lapland is forest, swamp, and fells. “In the Middle of Nowhere”, is the slogan of the municipality of Salla.
Hundreds of kilometres of road connect the villages and a few more densely-populated areas in the area. Much of the lives of the people of Lapland is spent sitting in a car.
When a Salla resident calls the police, it takes an average of 54 minutes for the patrol to arrive.
What about Utsjoki in the far north? It can take up to two hours before the police can make it to the spot. The police usually take calls 165 kilometres away in Ivalo. The most remote villages of Salla are 145 kilometres from the police station in Kemijärvi.
Väyrynen feels that the state has put the residents of remote areas in a position of complete inequality compared with those who have moved to the cities.
“Physical inviolability is even more important than health care.”
Sometimes the feeling is one of outright desperation. Väyrynen explains how a few years ago one woman in Salla had to search for the body of her drowned husband in a rapids herself after the police stopped searching once their working hours were over. Finally the corpse was found by a dog patrol, which travelled from Oulu, 330 kilometres away. The patrol did not show up until municipal leaders had demanded help via the Ministry of the Interior.
Like the leaders of many remote municipalities, Väyrynen blames the shortage of police officers on a state efficiency programme, which concentrates police officers and other services where the biggest number of people live.
Crime is not exactly a major problem in the east and north of Finnish Lapland, even though there are few enforcers. According to police statistics, drunken driving and arrests for public drunkenness have decreased in Lapland, as they have in the whole country.
In border areas, such as Salla, Border Guards will help the police, when needed, in enforcing traffic regulations.
Nevertheless, driving while intoxicated remains a common practice in Lapland. In remote villages of Inari, in Kaamanen and Sevettijärvi, it is a common sight to see the cars and snowmobiles parked in front of a bar to be driven off after closing time.
In the north of Finnish Lapland, at least, it is quite rare for the owner of a bar to report a driver who has been drinking. Especially arresting someone from one’s own village would lead to extensive resentment on the part of the neighbours, and after all, a heavy drinker is also a good customer.
And even if an intoxicated driver were to be reported to the police, the police would not show up until much later. Hence people often do not bother to even call the police.
It is in this vacuum of law enforcement where poachers operate. In the vast area patrolled by Heikki Säkkinen, only about a dozen cases of poaching are revealed each year.
Säkkinen takes a practical view of his work. He does not moralize.
“If a poacher doesn’t get caught, he has done his job better than me”, he says.
The overwhelming majority of cases of poaching are never resolved. Predators simply disappear from the forests.
So why do people in Lapland hate large predators like bears, wolves, wolverines and lynx so passionately?
It’s because they eat reindeer.
In the village of Naruska in Salla, Tarja Sipola holds an orange band in her hand, with the reindeer brand of her husband Tuomo engraved in it. A reindeer herder whom they know placed the band on the Sipolas’ door handle in the morning.
The band had been worn by one of the family’s reindeer, until it was attacked by a wolverine. Reindeer herders of North Salla are in the habit of placing a necklace around the necks of female reindeer, because wolverines dislike the taste of plastic. Consequently, the predators leave evidence of what they have done in the forest.
Sipola says that he has also seen more bears than before.
“There are not enough permits to kill bears. They will even come close to people”, Tarja Sipola says, as she slices dry reindeer meat for the guests to eat.
Reindeer are Sipola’s livelihood. The family sells reindeer meat to the south of Finland. There is plenty of demand, which means that each reindeer that is eaten by a wolverine or bear cuts into their income.
Reindeer herder and meat processor Hannu Lahtela of Salla calculates that predators ate more than 1,000 reindeer of the reindeer herders’ association in the last herding season, adding up to total estimated losses in meat sales of EUR 150,000, says Lahtela, and the same amount in processing income. He expects the new year to be even worse.
“Spring hunting of bears should be brought back”, Lahtela says. Spring hunting was made illegal in 1993.
Tarja Sipola’s husband Tuomo earns extra money in the south of the country, and Hannu Lahtela fears that he will soon have to give up his meat processing company, because of increasing losses caused by predators.
According to one hunter from Inari, it is sometimes absolutely necessary to hunt predators illegally.
For instance, if a bear appears in an area where reindeer are having their calves, it is killed, regardless of whether or not a permit has been issued. The hunter, who has shot bears himself, feels that the supervision enacted by Metsähallitus is spying that serves no purpose.
Hunters in Lapland are also angry that Kainuu, which is located at the southern end of the reindeer-herding area, gets bear hunting permits out of the same quota that the north of Lapland does, even though Lapland has more reindeer herders and reindeer than Kainuu does. Hunting is also more difficult, because there are fewer forest roads in Lapland than there are in Kainuu.
The state does pay compensation for the reindeer that are killed by predators, but the carcasses of reindeer calves in particular are hard to find in the wilderness area, and the payment of compensation has been delayed again, says Tarja Sipola.
The view from the living room of the Sipola house is to the east - the forest of the back yard, or more accurately, the wilderness.
Going east from the yard, there is only one man-made structure to be seen - a fence in the border zone, with the purpose of keeping the reindeer of the Salla herders in Finland. After the fence, the wilderness continues far into Russia, from where the bears reportedly come, regardless of the fence, to eat the reindeer of Finnish Lapland.
It is not always just animals that cross from Russia into Finland. Tarja Sipola says that a few years ago a drunken Russian man appeared in Naruska.
He stole a bicycle, food, alcohol, and two cars, the latter of which he took from the Sipolas’ yard, right under the noses of Tarja and Tuomo.
When he got to the road, the thief drove the car into the ditch. The wanderer was caught, even though it took police two hours to reach the spot.
Heikki Säkkinen stops his snowmobile in the Tuntsa wilderness in the border zone. Ari Pennanen of the Lapland Border Guard rides up alongside him.
There is a paw print in the snow.
A wolverine has passed through between the birches and pines. Säkkinen and Pennanen bow down to examine it.
“Not a very big wolverine”, Säkkinen deduces. The print is fresh because snow had fallen the previous night. But what is the sharp-edged groove that weaves between the indentations?
The wolverine has been carrying something in its teeth. Heikki Säkkinen believes that the predator has been dragging the leg of a reindeer.
“That’s where he has taken a new grip”, says Ari Pennanen, pointing to a wider indentation.
Säkkinen hops onto his snwomobile and disappears into the patch of young trees. A reindeer carcass might be nearby. Might it be possible to finally see a reindeer eaten by a wolverine?
All kinds of stories circulate in Lapland about wolverines and similar predators. It is said that they can bite a reindeer’s head off and eat the eyes, or leave an injured reindeer to suffer so that the meat will stay fresh. Wolverines run on top of the snow, while the long legs of the reindeer sink into the snowbank.
A few minutes later Säkkinen returns. He did not find a carcass - at least not nearby.
Ari Pennanen also starts his snowmobile. The sound can be heard from afar in the silent forest. Somewhere a bear can certainly hear the noise. The bear will have just woken up from its winter sleep, with a tremendous hunger.
A springtime treat for bears are reindeer calves, which are currently being born throughout the reindeer herding area of Finland. The predator’s mouth waters to smell a reindeer herd. The paws press the snow, and the pace speeds up.
And so goes the cycle of life in Finnish Lapland in the springtime.
The reindeer are followed by predators, the predators are pursued by poachers, the poachers are pursued by wilderness inspectors, and the inspectors are followed by the Border Guard.
What about the police?
There are none to be seen just now.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 16.5.2009
MIKKO-PEKKA HEIKKINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
mikko-pekka.heikkinen@hs.fi
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| 18.5.2010 - THIS WEEK |
 Predator tracks |
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