Friday, October 10, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

Dani rescued four wild squirrels – remained friends

Published 19 November 2022
– By Editorial Staff
Dani Connor developed strong bonds with the squirrels.
3 minute read

Londoner Dani Connor traveled to Sweden last year and had the experience of a lifetime when she rescued four wild baby squirrels.

Dani Connor went from England to northern Sweden in March last year. She is a nature photographer as well as a zoologist and came to volunteer with another nature photographer. She fell for the Swedish nature and especially the wildlife very quickly, and especially for her new favorite animal – the squirrel.

With their exaggerated ears, charismatic personality and cute face, it’s hard not to fall for them, says Dani in one of her videos.

She remained in Sweden because of the corona crisis and spring came to Kalvträsk. Then a tragedy occurred – a female squirrel she had been following with her camera, which she called Remi, was run over. Dani knew Remi had kids.

– When I said goodbye to her, I sat in the forest for a while and suddenly I see something red in the grass. It was a small baby squirrel, she says.

She quickly realized that there were four cubs and that they would not survive without help. Dani then decided to save the cubs. From that day, she spent four to six hours in the woods with the cubs, making sure they were fed and comfortable.

She named them Little Pear, Baby Moomin, Cheburashka and Little Flame.

Pretty quickly the baby squirrels became comfortable with Dani and came down from the tree when she called. She developed a close relationship with them, something she says she learned a lot from.

– The squirrels have given me so much joy and also taught me patience and perseverance to keep them alive. They have also taught me the importance of creating bonds with individual wild animals.

 

The squirrels grew up and fended for themselves. It was therefore time for Dani to leave her squirrel family and travel on. Only at the end of 2020 did she come back to Kalvträsk again and look for her new family. Winter had come and the snow was thick on the trees. Every day she went to the forest where the squirrels had lived, without seeing any of them, but after a few days Dani finally caught sight of the squirrels. She put out some peanuts and several squirrels came to eat. However, it wasn’t one of the kids, but other squirrels.

Despite her daily visits to the squirrel forest, she saw no cubs, until one day when she stayed home. She looked out her window and saw a little squirrel sitting there.

– It wasn’t afraid when I opened the window and I immediately saw who it was. Baby Pear.

Shortly afterwards she also saw Cheburashka. Two of the baby squirrels had survived. She does not know what happened to the other two, but that two survived is still against all odds.

Dani concludes by saying that she had no idea that she would develop such a strong bond with these animals when she travelled to Sweden.

– After spending hundreds of hours in the forest, I learned to identify all the squirrels and their personalities. It was also fascinating to see the different bonds they had with each other.

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PFAS levels declining in Sweden’s major lakes

Published today 12:02
– By Editorial Staff
PFAS levels have been measured in fish from Lake Vättern, Lake Vänern, and Lake Mälaren, three of Sweden's largest lakes.
2 minute read

Bans on dangerous PFAS substances have shown results in Sweden’s major lakes. However, levels still remain above limit values in Lake Vättern.

PFAS are environmental toxins often called “forever chemicals” because they break down very slowly and therefore accumulate in soil, water, animals and even humans.

Certain PFAS substances can be harmful to humans, with several studies having pointed to their potential to cause cancer, liver damage, impaired reproductive ability, intestinal diseases and thyroid disorders, among other health issues.

It was recently discovered that Swedish wild animals have unusually high levels of these substances, with forest voles among others likely suffering liver damage due to the forever chemicals.

Decreased since the 2000s

In a new study conducted by the Swedish Museum of Natural History, commissioned by the Water Conservation Associations, researchers measured the occurrence of these substances in fish in Swedish lakes. This was done using samples from the museum’s environmental sample bank, which dates back to the early 1970s.

The results show that PFAS levels have generally decreased in Swedish lakes. In Lake Mälaren and Lake Vänern, levels have decreased since the early 2000s, and in Lake Vättern since 2008.

Problems remain

The reason for the decrease is believed to be the international banning of the most well-known PFAS substances. However, Arctic char in Lake Vättern still exceed the Water Framework Directive’s limit value for PFOS, one of the PFAS substances that has been banned.

Our results show that measures and bans have had an effect, but also that the PFAS problem is far from solved, says Suzanne Faxneld from the Environmental Analysis and Research unit at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, in a press release.

Stricter limit values for these chemicals are now being discussed in the EU. If these are implemented, Faxneld believes that Sweden’s major lakes will exceed the new limit values. The study shows that preparations should be made for stricter regulations from the EU.

It’s also very important to prevent these substances from entering the environment in the first place, she says.

Conservation or animal cruelty? Denmark’s rewilding projects under fire

Biodiversity

Published 5 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
At the rewilding project Saksfjed Wilderness in Denmark, Galloway cattle, Exmoor horses and Tauros cattle graze freely year-round.
6 minute read

Restoring nature means letting it return to the wild – releasing control and allowing natural processes to develop. In Denmark, cattle and horses graze freely year-round as part of ambitious rewilding projects to recreate original ecosystems.

However, the method has created a difficult balancing act: while the projects demonstrably benefit biodiversity, they draw strong criticism from animal welfare organizations who argue that the animals are subjected to unnecessary suffering.

Knutshoved Odde is a 30-kilometer-long peninsula located near Vordingborg, about 90 kilometers southwest of Copenhagen, Denmark. The area was formed during the Ice Age and consisted until the 1800s of natural pastures, water holes, and wetlands – as evidenced by historical maps. Since then, large parts have been converted to agricultural land through drainage, stone removal, and filling of natural depressions in the landscape.

The rewilding project LIFE Clima-Bombin, which started in 2019, primarily aimed to restore the natural environment that previously existed, and then preserve it – something they have now succeeded in doing. This was made possible with funding from the EU’s LIFE fund and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. To restore the natural lands, they began by recreating the landscape from the ground up. Agricultural land has been transformed by replacing large quantities of stones and sowing seeds with wild grassland species.

We want to recreate what we call ‘The Old Country’. That is, the landscape as it looked before 1800, when the medieval landscape contained water holes, pastures, and large, scattered oaks. Denmark was intensively grazed for 6,000 years until the king sold his land. At the beginning of the 19th century, everything changed to agriculture and dark forests. And then almost all our biodiversity disappeared, said Peer Ravn, who is a partner in the project, to the Danish Society for Nature Conservation in 2023.

The biggest change occurred when they removed the pumps that had drained the land, and now six islands have emerged after restoring the water areas. To create more biodiversity, they also have cattle and horses grazing in the areas year-round.

Now nature has returned to Knutshoved Odde. The area, which was previously poor in plants, now blooms colorfully in summer. Since the wetlands were restored, more and more breeding birds have arrived each year. The area is also an important habitat for all species of Denmark’s endangered amphibians, whose habitats were previously threatened by flooding. Now the frogs have better conditions with the restored water holes.

The agricultural land has now returned to its former state – by recreating the land and letting nature have free rein, it has relatively quickly taken hold again, where biodiversity now flourishes.

At Saksfjed Vildmark, cattle graze freely. Photo: Saksfjed Vildmark/FB

Domesticated grazing animals

The grazing animals are a central part of nature restoration as they perform so-called “natural disturbances” similar to those that existed when more large grazing animals lived freely in Europe. The Knutshoved Odde area is a completed and successful project where grazing animals were used, but far from the only rewilding project in Denmark.

The Saksfjed Vildmark project is an ongoing and relatively new project – started in 2023. It is an 800-hectare area in southern Lolland, which here too was previously agricultural land. There they have restored wetlands, sown wild species, and also introduced grazing livestock and horses.

The area is a Natura 2000 area and is described as one of the largest rewilding projects underway in Denmark. The agricultural land is gone and now the site is rich in species and biodiversity, something they claim has been made possible largely by the grazing animals.

At Saksfjed Vildmark today there are Galloway cattle, Exmoor horses, and Tauros cattle. They graze down the vegetation and thereby prevent overgrowth, trample up soil, and promote biodiversity.

Even if we don’t see the animals, we can see that they have been here. They have made a path through this former reed sea. The horses have scratched themselves on this birch, they have scraped with their hooves on the ground so that sandy patches have formed, and they have grazed off the green leaves up to over a meter’s height, which creates a semi-open landscape, explains Jens Thorvig Andersen, who is a nature interpreter at the area, for Naturpodden.

Since ecological conditions have changed over the past hundred years, carbon dioxide and nitrogen emissions have also increased dramatically. This means that larger and faster-growing plants take over the landscape, such as grass, thistles, and nettles. But when large animals graze, it affects the landscape and gives small plants greater advantages to flourish.

Starving animals are shot

There are more ongoing rewilding projects in Denmark where grazing animals are used to promote biodiversity. The animals are allowed to live completely freely within fenced areas and often receive no supplementary feed, which in practice means they must fend for themselves. The animals also don’t have the same supervision requirements normally required and live essentially their lives outside human hands – who only check on them from a distance.

This has sparked strong criticism, particularly against the Mols Laboratory, which is a kind of field laboratory in Mols Bjerge National Park in southeastern Jutland, Denmark. There, since 2016, they have let livestock and horses roam freely year-round in a rewilding project, but it hasn’t gone entirely smoothly.

During 2023, starvation among the animals was reported and that the food available in nature simply wasn’t sufficient. A large part of the vegetation is also toxic to horses and cattle, such as ragwort.

All animals at risk of starving to death were shot instead – a total of 67 percent of the animals between 2019-2020.

At the Mols Laboratory, the animals never get older than six years, said equine veterinarian Lotte Bøgedal to Djurskyddet (Swedish animal welfare magazine) in 2023.

It is primarily the Mols Laboratory that has received strong criticism regarding its grazing wild-living animals, and it’s unclear whether all rewilding projects have exactly the same conditions for the animals. However, a common component seems to be that the animals take care of themselves, without supplementary feeding, year-round.

Horses grazing freely in August this year at the Mols Laboratory. Photo: Molslaboratoriet/FB

Animal welfare or nature conservation

All these nature restoration projects in Denmark can see clear benefits from the year-round grazing animals in the form of rich and varied nature that has re-emerged – but the animal welfare issue becomes complex and challenging, especially in a society where animal rights carry increasing weight. Risk of starvation and suffering cannot be ruled out when animals live essentially as wild animals, but at the same time they cannot be classified as wild since they are both fenced and domesticated.

It simply becomes an animal welfare law issue, since in practice it would be illegal for, for example, a private person to keep animals in a similar way. Denmark has animal welfare laws, including that animals’ needs must always be met, which includes access to food. However, they passed a new law in 2021 that can allow animals living fenced in national parks to “regulate their population naturally according to food availability.” To implement the law, however, one must apply for an exemption from the animal welfare law. According to Bøgedal, the field laboratory had at least not received such an exemption in 2023.

Morten DD Hansen, who works at the Mols Laboratory, believes the criticism is not “unexpected” but nevertheless points out that it is not illegal to keep animals as they do at the field laboratory.

Many people feel sorry for the animals, but we prioritize letting the animals live as wildly as possible and interact with the varied nature as unregulated as possible. Research is conducted on the animals’ behavior and when this work is finished it will naturally be published”, he writes to Djurskyddet.

Reintroduction of wild animals

In Sweden and other parts of Europe, work has been done to reintroduce European bison in forests for nature conservation purposes. The idea is that it should benefit biodiversity by, among other things, counteracting overgrowth and creating habitats for many endangered species. In Sweden, the reintroduction is still in a preliminary study phase.

The difference there, however, is that European bison are a wild species that previously existed in Swedish forests, while the animals kept free in Denmark are domesticated animals. Arguments from an animal welfare perspective can therefore be that bison are created for the wild, while the other animals are too domesticated to fend for themselves. Additionally, Sweden is considering supplementary feeding of the bison initially to reduce the risk of starvation.

Despite the criticism, Danish rewilding projects continue to develop successfully. While the results for biodiversity are clearly positive, the challenge remains of how animal welfare should be guaranteed in these semi-wild environments. The debate reflects a larger discussion about where the line is drawn between nature’s own processes and human responsibility for the animals that humans once domesticated.

Finland’s wolf population grows dramatically

Biodiversity

Published 1 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Wolves have been observed in new locations, primarily in southwestern Finland.
1 minute read

Finland’s wolf population increased markedly last year – significantly more than in previous years. The largest growth occurred in the western parts of the country.

In March last year, the number of wolves in Finland was estimated at 295 individuals. By March this year, the figure had grown to 430. The numbers are estimates based on recorded observations, DNA monitoring, and data on wolf mortality. The number of wolves could therefore be between 413 and 465 individuals.

The number of individuals has grown by a full 46 percent compared to last year, so it’s a really dramatic increase, says researcher Mia Valtonen at the Finnish Natural Resources Institute to Yle.

The wolf population has increased mainly in western Finland, particularly in the southwestern parts. However, wolves have been observed in significantly larger areas than before, even in places where they have never been seen previously.

In Scandinavia, the wolf has long been considered threatened and has had strong protection, but in May the EU Parliament approved a downgrading of the wolf’s protection status. This means that population management hunting could now be permitted in Finland, something that Finnish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Sari Essayah has strongly advocated for.

Without population management hunting, the number of wolves is calculated to increase to 557 individuals in November and 436 in March next year. With population management hunting, there would of course be fewer, says Samu Mäntyniemi, leading researcher at the Natural Resources Institute.

Baltic Sea in critical condition – fishing bans no longer sufficient

Published 30 September 2025
– By Editorial Staff
The EU's fishing plan for the Baltic Sea has failed and fish stocks cannot be saved even with a fishing ban, a new report shows.
1 minute read

The Baltic Sea is in such poor condition that even fishing bans are insufficient to save fish stocks, according to a new EU report. Today, EU ministers will hold a crisis meeting in Stockholm, Sweden to discuss the situation.

In about a month, EU countries must decide on fishing quotas for the Baltic Sea for next year. However, a new report commissioned by the EU ahead of this decision-making process, written by fisheries expert Christian Möllmann from the University of Hamburg, Germany, concludes that the current system implemented in the Baltic Sea is not working as intended.

“The MAP has largely failed to achieve its objective of restoring and maintaining harvested species populations above MSY levels”, the report states.

Furthermore, Möllmann warns that even a complete fishing ban in the Baltic Sea would not be sufficient for fish stocks to recover.

“A fast recovery of cod and open sea herring stocks is unlikely even under a fishing ban”.

On Tuesday, a meeting will be held in Stockholm where fisheries and climate ministers, commissioners, and various EU parliamentarians from Baltic Sea countries will gather to discuss the situation. Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall will lead the meeting together with her fisheries counterpart Costas Kadis.

We all know that the Baltic Sea is in very poor condition and has been for a long time. But I think there is much greater cooperation between countries today, Roswall told Swedish news agency TT.

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