The Ministry of Rural Affairs and Infrastructure has made a proposal to change the compensation for bear damage to the Sami villages.
In the current system, Sami villages receive compensation for bear damage based on the area of the Sami village.
But in the new agreement, Sami villages would also be compensated according to the number of estimated bears or on the estimated density of bears within the grazing areas.
The proposal was already ready two years ago but was de-prioritised then and is now proposed to come into force on 1 October.
– It will be a small improvement. It’s not an easy nut to crack, everyone is never satisfied, but as it looks now, we have no compensation at all, says Lars Thomas Persson, reindeer herder in Gällivare forest community, to Sami Radio.
Research in Norway
However, the problem with bears exists throughout Sápmi and on the Norwegian side a research project is being carried out on it.
For six years, the Norwegian Institute for Natural Research has been researching how many reindeer bears take in a year.
– We follow both reindeer and bears and investigate how many reindeer the bear takes per you, says researcher Ole-Gunnar Støen.
In the report, the researchers see that during the calving season, the bear takes two to three calves per day in the mountains in Idre Sámiby, even though it is not there for that long. In the forest country, the bear initially kills a calf every three days and their final report comes next year.