The debate over hunting brown bears in Sweden: protecting them versus hunting for sport.

Sweden started bear hunting on Wednesday. They gave out 486 licenses for people to kill bears. But some people are worried because this might make the bear population go down a lot.

These people say that hunting bears is just for fun and doesn't help the bears. They think Sweden should try to protect the bears instead of killing them.

Experts say that Sweden can only kill about 250 bears each year to keep the population healthy. Last year, Sweden let people kill many more bears than that, which could be a problem.

Sweden counts the number of bears every few years to see how many there are. They think the number of bears went up a little bit but then went down again.

Hunting bears is only allowed in certain areas of Sweden, and there are rules about it. The hunting season ends in October, but sometimes they stop hunting sooner if they kill enough bears.