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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: November 2006

Mink farm raids

 

Midnight raiders on October 14, 2006 released 11,000 mink from a farm in Oza does Rios, Spain, and released as many as 5,000 from two other sites in Galicia. Galician farmers produced about 80% of the 400,000 mink who are pelted each year in Spain, the Barcelona-based animal rights group Fundacion Altarriba told Associated Press.

About 6,500 mink got past the farm perimeter fences, Galician authorities said. About 4,550 were recovered within 48 hours, 70% of them dead.

Having fast metabolisms and no hunting experience, ranched mink rarely thrive after release, but mink who survived in Britain are blamed for hunting water voles to the verge of extinction. Efforts to extirpate the mink have not succeeded, but reintroducing otters is working, reported Laura Benesi of the Oxford University Wildlife Conservation Research Unit in September 2006.

Bonesi and team released 17 otters into the upper Thames. "When the otters arrived there were 60 or more mink in this small area," Bonesi told Sunday Times environment editor Jonathan Leake. "The mink did not disappear completely, but within a few months they were doing much less damage."