From: Jon Wikne Newsgroups: rec.animals.wildlife,alt.animals.felines,no.general,no.alt.katter Subject: URGENT - Stop killing of lynxes Date: 2 Feb 1996 12:22:43 GMT Organization: Department of Physics, University of Oslo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <4esvmj$m0c@ratatosk.uio.no> Hi, all, I'm sad today. There are about 500 individuals of the Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx) left in the forests of Norway. And now the Ministries of the Environment (!!) and Agriculture have approved hunting down and killing 104 of them in February. The hunting approval explicitly includes females with half-grown kittens. If we assume that 50% of the lynxes killed are females, and that 50% of these have two kittens that will die slowly from starvation when their mother is dead, the actual number will be even higher. The result may well be that the remaining lynxes in Norway will become too few and too scattered to breed successfully, and that the lynx will become extinct in our country. The reason appears to be pressure from the sheep farmers. Lynxes occasionally do take sheep for prey, of course. That these farmers are subsidized by the Government, and also get compensation for sheep killed by wild animals, doesn't seem to matter. Neither does the fact that roadkills and theft by people (get your own lamb chops!) account for far more sheep lives than the lynxes do. The sheep farmers claim that they think of the welfare of their animals. Of course, the fact that handsome prices are paid for lynx fur has nothing to do with the hunt.... Can we do something about this? Well, politicians generally don't like negative publicity. It's bad for reelection. We could try sending postcards to the Minister of the Environment in Norway, Mr. Thorbjorn Berntsen, stating something like "Stop the killing of 20% of the lynx population". If he gets enough such cards, he may feel compelled to do something about it. The address is: Miljovernminister Thorbjorn Berntsen Miljoverndepartementet P.O. Box 8013 Dep 0030 Oslo NORWAY He also has an e-mail address, although X400 style, not Internet. Whether this guy actually reads e-mail, I wouldn't know. The X400 address is: G=thorbjorn;S=berntsen;OU=mdpost;O=md;P=dep;A=telemax;C=no Another possibility would be to boycott Norwegian mutton. What is a lynx anyway? Just so you know what kind of animals we are talking about, check this URL: http://lynx.uio.no/jon/gif/cats/lynxes.jpg or this: http://lynx.uio.no/jon/gif/cats/he_lynx.jpg Greetings, -- Jon Wikne wikne@lynx.uio.no http://lynx.uio.no/jon/ Related Article: Letter 2: Have You Seen a Lynx?

Jon Wikne 06-04-1997