Tuesday, 23rd December 2008

Santa may have had some difficulty getting around this year.  He had enough trouble in 2007, with  the Scottish executive demanding all fur be registered as per Regulation (EC) 338/97 restrictions on importation. Then Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer broke methane emissions regulations over Ulster, Santa left carbon footprints on a hearth in Wales and he was deeply offensive to women in England when he said "Ho Ho Ho". Back in Lapland, his elves had to contend with the working time directive, the ongoing argument about whether they have human rights and, of course, with elf and safety. Santa also has his multiple identities to account for as Claus, Saint Nicholas and Papa Noël, and why he's living in Finnish Lapland when he was born in Turkey.

The new problem, however, is far more serious. It's to do with Rudolf, and I don't mean his disability discrimination case against the other reindeer for laughing and calling him names. Rudolf his wild reindeer buddies are dying out in Finland courtesy of the EU. Soon Santa will have no one to pull his sleigh.

Rudolf is on the run because the EU decided wolves are an endangered species. It has banned wolf hunting. In Italy the 500 remaining wolves remind the misty-eyed population of the capital city of former greatness (i.e. before AD451).  In Spain and Portugal, the combined population of 2,400 wolves rarely visit Marbella or the Algarve. Even in Swedish Lapland the ban is not a problem unless you are a reindeer herdsman wanting to supply the supermarket rather than feed the wolves.

Finnish Lapland is another matter. It has a border with Russia and Russia's wolf population is such a problem that bounty hunters were called in. Wolves are clever and they had no trouble digging tunnels under Finland's "patchy" border fence. They now benefit from EU endangered species status while they hunt down another endangered species, Finnish wild reindeer.

The EU has issued only six wolf hunting licences in the problem areas. The bureaucrats compare road kills of reindeer (2,500 animals in 2002) to 200-300 officially killed by wolves in 2002. However, in a rugged country like Finland dead reindeer on the road are a lot easier to count than chewed bones scattered in the woods.  It's also a lot easier to jump inside a car than hug your way up a tree when wolves arrive.

Oddly enough, no vegetarian carrot-leather shod EU ecologist has been sensible enough to suggest that a clampdown on Finnish drink driving would actually be of more use to the reindeer than endangered species status – which has effectively done what is says on the label and, well... endangered them.

Whatever the true figures, the Russo-Finnish wolf population has had six years to expand since 2002. In Finnish border towns parents heading for the shops have found wolf tracks following their kids' footprints to school. A mother found paw prints leading to her baby's pram left on the porch. Nothing, though, can be done to change the EU rules until there is real evidence of a problem – and the last "real evidence" is church records from the severe winter of 1823, when wolves took 23 Finnish children.

Once again it is the EU's obsession with having a one-size-fits-all policy is at fault.  Finland is not like Italy or Spain or even Sweden. Controlling the local and migrant wolf population, and protecting wild reindeer, should be a Finnish matter.

Spare a thought for Finnish parents watching over their children at play, with a shotgun to hand, this Christmas.

RALPH ATKINSON

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