Freya, a female walrus, became the mascot of the Oslofjord, approaching tourists, sleeping on boats and being petted as she became very accustomed to the human who for years fed her to take selfies in her company. In short, a tourist attraction.
Thus, the lack of fear and mistrust in wild animals, as often happens, causes them to be overconfident and therefore dangerous to humans. And that is exactly what happened to poor Freya, surrounded day and night by people, flashes and screams of tourists, who began to no longer sleep as her ethology demanded. According to experts, the species should sleep 20 hours a day, but Freya did not satisfy her physiological sleep by disturbing tourists. According to the authorities, the stressed and self-confident animal had become a danger to tourists. Yes, but the tourists are to blame.
Therefore, the solution to the problem of the walrus sleeping on boats was to cull it. Don’t just kill an innocent being, kill a victim. Victims of unhealthy tourism, victims of people’s ignorance, selfishness, victims of a mismanagement that had to do everything possible to prevent people from feeding it, to protect the walrus from humanization and disturbance.
Instead it didn’t happen. Freya was fed, approached, blackmailed with food for selfies, exploited for tourism, and finally, once “used” enough, oppressed for showing signs of stress at being disrespected.
According to Norwegian authorities, every effort has been made to discourage tourists from approaching the animal. “Observations at the scene over the past week have shown that the public has ignored the current recommendation to keep a clear distance from the walrus,” the fisheries directorate said in a statement. “Therefore, management concluded that the possibility of potential harm to humans was high and the welfare of the animal was not being maintained.” Unable to find an alternative solution to killing, Freya was killed.
It’s not clear what the preventive and deterrent measures were put in place for tourists to discourage them from feeding the walrus, but obviously they weren’t enough, whatever they were.
Siri Martinsen, spokeswoman for animal rights group NOAH, said: “It’s very shocking. It was a hasty move, and the authorities should have fined anyone who failed to heed the advice to stay away from Freya. It was a missed opportunity to show people how to respect wild animals.”
“It’s incredibly sad that they decided to euthanize such a beautiful animal simply because we didn’t behave well with it,” said biologist Rune Aae.
Another option, which doesn’t explain why they didn’t consider it, would have been to put the animal in captivity or semi-freedom, thus protecting tourists from any danger, but at the same time protecting the walrus and saving its life . . In fact, the Greens reported earlier this week that experts had recommended sedating Freya, removing her from populated areas and moving her to the Spitsbergen archipelago. But Bakke-Jensen, Norway’s defense minister, said it was “not a viable option because it would have been too complex”.
According to Per Espen Fjeld, biologist and former wildlife researcher, the media coverage that Freya’s story had and has is exaggerated compared to much larger issues such as climate change and the loss of ecosystems that are killing thousands of animals every day.. .like Freya, just without the name and story behind it.
“If we’re really interested in walruses, we should look north, where thousands of Freya’s relatives live. The sea ice they live on is melting due to climate change. It is a gigantic paradox that these challenges receive almost no attention while protecting a lonely walrus as if it meant everything. Unfortunately, not all walruses have names like Freya.”
Definitely a profound and very right thought, but that detracts from the focus on the issue: climate change and biodiversity loss are serious and urgent issues, but that doesn’t mean tourists shouldn’t be made aware of having the right balance wild animals. Indeed, fighting and educating about the protection of animal species is pointless if at the same time we allow people to invade the space of wild animals, disturb them, feed them, change their ethology to take a picture and finally, If these become a problem, treat them as waste and kill them by washing our hands for our mistakes.
* Chiara Grasso is an ethologist and President of Eticoscienza
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