The international environmental group WWF, the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature (NSCN) and Foreningen Vaare Rovdyr, FVR, an association aimed at protecting carnivorous animals, are all suing.

The Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management (DN) decided this month to allow hunters to shoot as many as five wolves in eastern Norway through February 15 in an attempt to reduce harm to cattle and reindeer in the area.

Three wolves have already been killed. One was a female shot by accident. Females are protected so as not to reduce the number of wolves too drastically.

"We expect to win this case. If the hunt does continue however, and the last pair of wolves is shot, the environmental minister will be carrying a heavy burden of responsibility," the Norwegian chapter of WWF said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for Norwegian Environmental Minister Knut Arild Hareide said the minister was not yet prepared to comment on the case.

"He's taking into consideration the claims from the environmental groups," spokeswoman Eva Nordvik told AFP, pointing out that the decision to allow the wolf hunt was based on a parliamentary ruling in the first half of 2004.

"There is parliamentary backing," she said.

But NSCN head Erik Solheim said: "To go to court is the only way to get out the truth about the ongoing destruction. Norway now has only a third of the Norwegian target number (of wolves).

"And still the environmental minister refuses to stop the hunt of a directly endangered wolf stock."

Sweden, whose much larger wolf stock tends to roam back and forth across the Norwegian border, has meanwhile expressed outrage at its neighbor's decision to permit the hunt.

"We have a common Nordic responsibility to maintain the wolf stock, but Norway is not taking that responsibility," Swedish Environmental Minister Lena Sommerstad told the news agency TT:

"With Norway's wolf policy, the wolf stock will not survive and that means the burden on us will grow."

According to DN, 11 wolf cub litters were born in Scandinavia in 2004, three of then in Norway.

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