Brigitte Bardot slams Swedish wolf hunt

“How it is possible to act in such a retrograde fashion in a country like

Sweden?” the 76-year-old French icon asked in a letter to environment minister Andreas Carlgren.

In her letter, Bardot asked Carlgren to cull the ongoing hunt.

“Minister, I am begging you, spare those poor creatures by stopping the hunt and letting the already fragile (wolf) population strengthen itself” she wrote.

The Local reported in January that the European Commission had launched legal action against Sweden for allowing hunters to shoot 20 wolves this year even though the species is threatened with extinction.

As of Wednesday, all wolves but one had been shot in this year’s month-long hunting period, which ends Tuesday.

Sweden argues the hunt, which was reopened re-opened last year after a 46-year hiatus, allows it to strengthen the gene pool of its largely inbred wolf population.

The Scandinavian country wants to keep its wolf population at 210, and says it plans to import wolves from Finland and Russia to replace the culled ones.

The hunt is highly controversial in Sweden. On Sunday, protestors marched through central Stockholm carrying 20 coffins to symbolise the number of wolves in this year’s hunt.

Bardot shot to international fame in 1956 with her controversial role as a demon-driven temptress in the movie “And God Created Woman,” becoming an icon of the burgeoning sexual liberation era.

But stardom proved too much to handle and she abandoned her movie career in

1973, aged just 39, retiring to the French Riviera resort of Saint Tropez.

Since then she has swapped the role of sex symbol for that of campaigner, selling off everything she owned to fund her animal rights foundation.

Editor’s Note: a previous version of this article was erroneously adorned with a picture of the actress Ursula Andress, who has no connection whatsoever to the story. The error has now been corrected.