A rare wild animal in serious danger of extinction in northern Europe

Fur animals have always had a difficult destiny in contact with humans. In the mustelid family, belettes, hermines, puppies, fouls, marters, badgers and otters paid the high price of hunting for their fur. Thus badgers to the Pataude approach: it is still nearly 20,000 of them who are killed alone in France.

But for the European mink, the situation is even more dramatic. With less than 250 individuals throughout French territory, mainly in the southwest, its survival is directly threatened. In fact, in around twenty European countries, the species has already disappeared. The causes? Floor artificialization, disappearance of wetlands, aggressive management of rivers: the list is long. Because the animal is dependent on the wealth of food of rivers, marshes and wet meadows.

In the Visons family, the fate of his American cousin is not better. Imported from the end of the 19th century to make battery farming, it was used to supply luxury fur and precious oil. We remembered this during the Pandemic of COVID-19: in Denmark, a large producer country, nearly 17 million specimens in captivity had to be shot in emergency, because it was discovered that unworthy promiscuity within these industrial farms favored the formation of virus tanks in these animals. His wild European cousin will have at least escaped this massacre. But for how long?