Local stakeholders have urged Sweden’s prime minister to fire the rural affairs minister because of the continuing crisis in the herring fishery in the Baltic Sea. Local government leaders and environmental groups complain that the rural affairs minister, Peter Kullgren, has favored large trawlers over small boats in the government’s distribution of fishing quotas. The excessive quotas, they say, add both to overfishing of herring, itself a large problem, and to shrinking populations of salmon, which rely on herring as a food source. Both herring and salmon are so overfished in the Baltic that their long-term sustainability is severely in question.
The trawlers, which are responsible for nearly all of Sweden’s herring harvest, sell their catch to factories for reduction into animal feed, which is both environmentally and economically irresponsible, local stakeholders say. In addition to the risk to the fish resource, the quota misallocation hurts local fishermen and the economic health of their rural communities. Small-scale fishermen catch herring for processing popular Swedish food products, such as Surströmming, a lightly salted, fermented herring product. These traditional foods are scarce or non-existent in many Swedish food stores because of the damage done to herring populations by trawlers, according to the stakeholders.
The rural affairs minister defends his actions, which can only be reversed by the prime minister, but local politicians, fishermen, environmentalists, and fishery scientists want the PM to go further and dismiss his rural affairs chief altogether. Baltic herring and sprat have been added to the “red lists” of international conservation groups, and scientists from many institutions say the species are in danger, but the rural affairs minister has ignored these warnings in favour of the industrial fishery for herring. Claes Nordmark, the mayor of Boden and chair of Norrbotten Municipalities said that in northern Sweden, confidence had been completely lost in the Minister of Rural Affairs, who, instead of prioritising the survival of herring, has driven the stocks closer to a critical point where recovery may soon become impossible.