Costs of Livestock Depredation by Large Carnivores in Sweden 2001 to 2013

• Main Authors: Widman, Marit, Elofsson, Katarina
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Canis lupus; Ursus arctos; Lynx; Lynx lynx lynx
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800917301398

Livestock depredation by large carnivores entails economic damage to farmers in many parts of the world. The aim of this paper is to analyse and compare the costs of livestock depredation by carnivores in Sweden across different carnivore species and counties. To this end, we estimate the government's compensation cost function using Swedish data on the county level over the period of 2001 to 2013. Compensation costs due to depredation by three large carnivores are considered: the brown bear (Ursus arctos), the wolf (Canis lupus) and the lynx (Lynx lynx). The results show that a 1% increase in the density of the carnivores leads to a 0.3–0.4% increase in compensation costs, whereas a 1% increase in the density of sheep results in a 0.8 and 1.1% increase in the compensation costs for brown bears and wolves, respectively. A larger share of unfenced pastures is associated with higher compensation costs for brown bear. The marginal cost of an additional carnivore individual varies considerably between counties, ranging between 1 and 82 EUR for lynxes, 0 and 266 EUR for brown bears, and 52 and 1067 EUR for wolves. Wildlife compensation; Livestock depredation; Lynx; Wolf; Brown bear; Sheep;