Nine mink traps have disappeared from Skorradalur, west Iceland, and no one knows the motivation behind what is almost certainly a human-initiated act.
“The traps have repeatedly disappeared, doing damages in the tens of thousands,” local K. Hulda Guðmundsdóttir told Fréttablaðið. “Clearly this is the work of a person, and we have responded by setting up security cameras. It’s pretty miserable to have to fight against this.”
Hulda says there are no leads yet pointing to who is taking the traps or why, but these traps are often placed in very specific areas that one might not stumble upon by chance.
“We can’t put any traps out,” she said. “It is the strangest and most mysterious thing.”
She does, though, have her suspicions regarding what kind of person could be behind these operations.
“There are all kinds of environmentalists,” she said. “It would be nice if the thief would come forward. Minks have no natural enemies [in Iceland] and people are trying to combat them. The mink can do a lot of damage to the bird life around here.”
Hulda admits that the security cameras may be operating in a gray area, where Iceland’s privacy laws are concerned, but that people should have the right to protect their property. For now, minks can operate in the area with greater impunity, much to Hulda’s dismay.
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