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The Environmental Board is paying 14,886 euros to farmers on Estonia's Saaremaa Island who have lost sheep to wolves in 2012, the regional newspaper Saarte Hääl said.
Estonia's environment authority pays Saaremaa farmers EUR 15,000 for wolf damage
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For 2011, the Environment Board shelled out 14,076 euros for 160 sheep killed by wolves in Saaremaa. In the year before that only one application was filed concerning seven sheep killed by wolves.
Tonu Talvi, biologist at the Environmental Board, said that wolves killed 148 sheep in Saaremaa during 2012 according to reports filed by farmers and the biggest payout to a single farmer was 3,745 euros. Wolves inflicted damage to 16 herds overall in the Kaarma, Salme, Torgu, Lumanda, Karla, Mustjala, Orissaare and Pihtla municipalities.
Two applications concerning 18 sheep were rejected because it couldn't be established on the basis of proof filed by the farmers that the sheep had fallen victim to wolves.
All over Estonia, 757 sheep were killed by wolves during 2012, according to applications for damage satisfied by the Environmental Board.
Data from the agricultural registers and information authority PRIA shows there were 17,580 sheep in Saaremaa as of September 2012. Thus the sheep killed by wolves made up 0.85 percent of the total number of sheep in Saaremaa, a ratio similar to that for the whole of Estonia.
In the period from 2008–2012, the country-wide ratio has been between 0.55 and 1.1 percent, said Talvi.