Moreover, these schemes are completely reliant on trustworthy monitoring. To pay the right people the right amount, we need to know how many carnivores there are and where. In Sweden, shifting snow conditions have made such accurate monitoring increasingly hard.
Why? One issue is that the more successful these schemes are, the more costly they become. In Sweden, payments have not kept pace with rising coexistence costs, remaining frozen for more than 20 years. It poses the question: Is society willing to pay the costs of carnivore recovery?
All is not lost though, wolverines are still doing well in the rest of Sweden, and the negative trends in the north can likely be turned with proper investment. In short, results-based payments must be designed to adapt to socio-ecological change, rising costs, and participants’ needs over time.