Cull threatens wolf population

Experts say there are 13 wolves left in Norway

OSLO, Norway -- Wildlife authorities in Norway are re-thinking plans to continue killing wolves following a bad year for the threatened population.

Last winter, government-sponsored hunters killed 10 wolves in southeastern Norway because sheep farmers complained the predators were attacking their stock.

Conservationists protested against the hunt saying the country's wolf population -- just 28 animals -- could not survive.

Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) CEO-Norway Rasmus Hansson told CNN: "Last year we told [the government] that harvesting such a great fraction of a very small population was biologically completely unsafe."

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Experts now say there are only 13 wolves left in Norway and that the single remaining wolf pack will probably scatter without breeding, because its alpha male was among those killed.

It is a major reversal for wolf recovery in southern Scandinavia where a few wolves migrated south from Finland -- where wolf hunting is still permitted in some areas -- into Sweden, and then into Norway nearly 10 years ago.

Hunters wiped out the wolves in southern Scandinavia, Sweden and Norway, in the early 1900s.

There are now fewer than 100 wolves -- which experts describe as an isolated and vulnerable population -- in the two countries. Norway's share of that population, experts say, has now suffered a catastrophic loss.

The government was planning to launch another wolf hunt this winter, but those plans are said to be on hold until Norwegian authorities develop a new policy on wolf management.