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In life or death
Although reintroduction is about bringing a species back, some individual animals never make it to their destination. Take the first three beavers bought by Västerbottens läns jaktvårdsförening (County wildlife management association) to reintroduce in the Tärnaån. Their first beaver, a female, was bought for 123 kr (about 3000 kr / $500 today) on 15 February 1923 and taken to Skansen for overwintering. It got enteritis (inflammation of the small intestine) and died in the spring. On 18 October that year, a beaver pair was bought for 800 kr (check out that price escalation!) and again taken to Skansen. They were infected with some kind of “plague” by a hare recently…
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Header image choice
I decided to use one of the pictures of the very first beaver reintroduced to Sweden in 1922 as the initial header image for this blog. This reintroduction project, the first successful and sustained reintroduction of beaver in Europe, is what brought me to investigate nativeness and naturalness through reintroduction. The first pair of beavers brought back to Sweden, which were trapped in Norway in one of the last remaining beaver colonies in that country, were overwintered at Skansen, the first open air museum and zoo in Stockholm. In the summer, the pair made the long journey to Bjurälvdalen in Jämtland county where they were released. A series of photos of…
