Last week, when the Oslo Fjord was basking in the sun and filled with swimmers, boaters and children enjoying the last week of summer vacation, it had one visitor: a 1,300-pound walrus pound named Freya.
This week is different. Not only has school started again and the weather has changed, but the walrus, who was once a source of joy and has become something of an international celebrity, has died.
On Sunday morning, Norwegian authorities kill Freya, saying she poses too much of a threat to those who don’t heed repeated warnings to stay away from her. Moving her out of the area was “too high a risk,” the officials added.
Environmentalists and Freya fans on social media say the decision to kill her, just three days after warning she may have to be deposed, was hasty and unnecessary.
But the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries said in a statement that it was the only option after the public did not heed the warnings.
“I’m sure this is the right call,” the board’s general manager, Frank Bakke-Jensen, said in the statement. “We take animal rights very seriously, but human life and safety must come first.”
Bakke-Jensen added that Norway’s Institute for Marine Research considered moving Freya out of the area, but “the far-reaching complexity of such an operation leads us to conclude that this is not a viable option”.
Moving a 1,300-pound mammal is no easy feat. Freya should have needed sedation and was then caught in a net to prevent her from drowning before being transported out of the area.
In Norway, Freya has dominated the news since her arrival in June, with trackers, Facebook groups and virtually daily articles documenting her plight. One Facebook page called “Freya the Walrus – Where is she now?” followed her. Since Sunday, the group, which has more than 1,000 members, has been flooded with sad comments and condolences.
The country’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, said he supported the conclusion that Freya should be brought down, telling a broadcaster it is “the right decision.”
Freya has appeared off the coast of England and many other European countries, including the Netherlands and Denmark, for at least two years.
Trine Tandberg, 62, who runs a children’s theater in Oslo, said: ‘Now she comes to this luxurious, densely populated beach and she’s dead. She said that she had been closely following the news reports about Freya.
Ms Tandberg said: ‘She hasn’t done anything with anyone. “That’s what makes a lot of us really, really angry about this whole thing.”
The Oslo fjord, where Freya was once, is a densely populated area that includes Oslo, the capital of Norway. About two million people live in the region, in a country of just over five million.
Walruses are social animals and rarely venture out anywhere alone, which may be why Freya seems to enjoy being around people and why she has been looking for a busy area. busy.
Fredrik Myhre, a marine biologist with the World Wide Fund for Nature in Norway, said: “I was amazed at the speed with which the decision to kill her was made. “They should be more patient.”
One option, experts say, would be to control the crowds that come to see Freya, cordon off the area or fines those who venture too close. According to Dan Jarvis, welfare and conservation director for British Divers Marine Life Rescue, a UK-based charity, Dan Jarvis, British Divers Marine Life Rescue’s director of welfare and conservation, the possibilities are Other features include making loud noises underwater or releasing the scent of predators to deter her.
But those choices aren’t straightforward: Threatening sounds and smells can also annoy other animals in the fjord and frighten them, Mr. Myhre said.
Experts in other countries Freya has visited in the past two years expressed disbelief in her fate.
Annemarie van den Berg, director of SOS Dolfijn, a Dutch marine rescue organization that was involved with Freya when she showed up in the Netherlands last year, said: “Norway quickly chose the option. final.
“Freya never stays in the same place for too long,” says van den Berg. When Dutch authorities handled Freya in the fall of 2021, she said, they focused on keeping people away from the animal.
While Freya looks cute while napping in the sun, van den Berg adds, “She’s a mammal and therefore dangerous.”
The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries has many times tell everyone to stay away from Freya, but the advice has been mostly ignored, a spokesman said last week. Authorities warn that the walrus face the prospect of being killed if they can’t convince viewers to stay away.
Swimmers got very close to the animal in her final days, taking selfies and sometimes even throwing things at her, a spokesman for the board of directors said. However, despite the warnings, no human injuries were reported.
Mr. Myhre, the marine biologist, places responsibility for Freya’s fate on those who refuse to heed the call to keep their distance. People wouldn’t take selfies next to a 1,300-pound bull, Myhre said, adding, “You shouldn’t do that with a walrus either.”
The timing of the murder has also been questioned. Summer holidays in Norway are coming to an end and rain has hit the area, so the crowds are likely to ease.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, there are about 225,000 walruses in the wild. They usually live in the ice-covered waters of Canada, Norway and Russia, as well as in Greenland and Alaska. They are losing some of their normal habitats like icebergs melting because of climate change.
Mr. Jarvis, the director of British Divers Marine Life Rescue, acknowledged the threat to humans posed by such wild animals, but said it was not reason enough to kill Freya.
“We’re not going to kill all the great white sharks just because one of them at a time might attack someone,” Mr Jarvis said.
Last year, Mr. Jarvis was part of the handling team Wally, another walrus, who spent about six weeks off the southwest coast of England in an area crowded with boats. To prevent Wally from causing damage to the ships, the local government provided him with a pedestal to lie on.
Glenn Murphy, who runs a boating and fishing business in the Oslo Fjord, says that locals’ reactions to Freya’s fate have been mixed, mainly due to the risk that someone could be injured. or killed, including children.
“To me, it seemed like she was looking for a companion,” Mr. Murphy said. “That could inadvertently turn out to be a terrible accident.”
