Ilpo Kojola, Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute, Oulu Game and Fisheries Research, Tutkijantie 2 A, FIN-90570 Oulu, Finland; Vikstrom Saara, University of Oulu, Department of Geography, Linnanmaa, FIN-90570 Oulu, Finland

There occur presently 6-7 wolf packs and 90-110 wolves in Finland, in each case the denning site is located closer than 60 km from the Finnish-Russian frontier and outside the northern reindeer husbandry district. Elsewhere in Finland wolves are usually freshly dispersed, roaming individuals. We examined human attitudes towards wolf by analyzing 432 (1996) and 1050 (1999) answers to questionnaires mailed to randomly selected people (1000 in 1996, 2000 in 1999) living in 20 (1996) and 22 (1999; 2 additional to 1996) municipalities outside the reindeer husbandry district. Wolf and wolverine shared bad image in peoples' minds, only 2% of answering people felt them as the most sympathetic species from the guild of four large carnivores (brown bear, wolf, wolverine, lynx). As could be predicted from the results of the earlier attitude research, attitudes were associated with age, education and profession. We did not, dislike we expected, found clear differences between urban and rural areas - although farmers most often chose the alternative of total extermination of wolf. No difference existed between core and peripheral wolf areas. The most popular choice as the suitable number for the whole country was 1-100 wolves. A significantly higher proportion of people in 1999 (40 %) than in 1996 (32 %) regarded wolf as dangerous to humans. We believe that this change was owing to public discussion about a threat of large carnivore attacks on humans after a female brown bear killed a jogging man in summer 1998.