Two new Arctic fox dens have been discovered in Finnish Lapland, adding nine new pups to the critically endangered species. This brings the total number of Arctic fox pups born in Finland this summer to 25.
According to the wildlife management agency Metsähallitus, this is positive news for the critically endangered Arctic fox. One of the dens, located near the Enontekiö mountains, is in the same place where a fox den was found last year for the first time in 25 years. A total of 16 cubs were found in the two new dens, bringing the total for all this year’s litters to 25 Arctic fox cubs.
– We had also observed these nests for a long time, but it was only a few days ago that the wildlife camera images we received revealed the cubs to us, says nature conservation expert Tuomo Ollila in a press release from the Finnish Wildlife Agency, according to Finnish state channel Yle.
Both WWF and Metsähallitus have been running feeding stations in the mountain areas to support the survival of Arctic fox cubs and also help the adults to stay in the region, even when natural food availability is low.
Petteri Tolvanen, Program Director of WWF’s Finnish branch, says the new discovery confirms that the Arctic fox is making a comeback in Finland.
– However, conservation efforts must continue in order to build on this positive development, he says.
The species is one of the oldest mammalian species on the Scandinavian peninsula, along with reindeer and arctic chamois. It is found in Siberia, Canada, Alaska and Greenland. In Scandinavia, it is mainly found in mountainous areas. It is critically endangered in Sweden and critically endangered in Finland.
Arctic foxes are monogamous and sometimes pups can stay with their parents for a year, and sometimes two Arctic fox families can live together in the same den.
The animals are largely scavengers and eat what they find. The color of their fur can be either white in winter and brown in summer or blue-black all year round.
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The vocational school Vamia in Vaasa, Finland receives thousands of applications annually from Africa and Asia for its free culinary education program.
Of this year’s 4,059 applications, nearly half came from Nigeria, and now the Finnish government wants the education to become fee-based for non-European students.
Ebuka Mbanugo, 33, from Nigeria already has a degree in accounting from his home country. But that degree hasn’t been of much use to him in his hometown of Lagos, he explains. Instead, he chose to move to Finland to study on Vamia’s international culinary program.
The education is free of charge – that is, financed by Finnish taxpayers.
— Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay a fee for my studies, he tells Yle.
He used his savings to travel to Finland and has received financial help from his family to build a life here.
Majority from Africa and Asia
In the practice kitchen at Vamia, the majority of students come from Asia and Africa. Of this year’s over 4,000 applications, 1,962 came from Nigeria, and overall the number of applications from outside the EU has increased dramatically in recent years.
Last year, over 12,200 people from countries outside Europe studied at Finnish vocational schools and 4,700 at upper secondary schools.
Principal Åsa Stenbacka says she doesn’t know exactly why the school receives so many applications from outside Europe, but she assumes that the free education plays a decisive role. It takes three people a full week to go through all the applications.
€7,000 per student
Each graduated restaurant chef provides Vamia with approximately €7,000 through the tax-funded state subsidy system. The government’s proposal means that students from outside Europe would have to pay this amount themselves to finance their education.
— This will significantly affect the number of applicants, says Stenbacka, who argues that both the school and companies that need workers will be affected.
She points out that many students already work alongside their studies to manage financially.
— If they also have to pay a fee of €7,000, it will become unsustainable for them, she continues.
About 75 percent of graduates find jobs in Finland’s restaurant industry. Some move to the capital region, Lapland, or Åland. At the same time, unemployment has increased in Finland in recent years, and the restaurant industry is notorious for its low wages and high staff turnover.
“The economy is strained”
Education Minister Anders Adlercreutz explains that a fee for foreign students is a way to save money for the state.
— At the beginning of the government term, the government made an assessment that a fee could be appropriate, since the economy is strained, he states.
He also highlights the problem of upper secondary schools and vocational schools attracting foreign students, often minors living without guardians in Finland.
Apprenticeship education, where students study in combination with work, will remain free of charge going forward.
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.
Gold is seen as a safe investment during uncertain times – its value has remained stable for centuries and the price is now breaking records almost daily.
Deposits believed to contain gold worth several billion euros have been discovered in eastern Finland. Mining company Endomines is now planning a massive expansion and aims to become a significant global gold producer.
In the easternmost part of Finland, just a few dozen kilometers from the Russian border, large gold deposits have raised hopes of an imminent gold rush. Record-high gold prices and new promising discoveries are giving Finnish mining company Endomines a bright outlook for the future.
— I believe in gold. There’s enormous potential here that hasn’t been exploited yet. We’re finding new promising deposits all the time, says the company’s CEO Kari Vyhtinen to Finnish public broadcaster Yle.
The latest major discovery is the Ukko deposit in the municipality of Ilomantsi, where gold occurs in connection with an enormous iron formation that is seven kilometers long. The deposit is part of the so-called Karelian gold line, a 40-kilometer-long area in Ilomantsi’s greenstone belt.
According to Bo Långbacka, a specialist expert at the Geological Survey of Finland, the Finnish bedrock is fully comparable to the rich ore areas in Canada and Australia. He believes that Finland, from that perspective, has Europe’s best conditions for gold extraction.
Seven-fold production increase planned
Currently, Endomines knows of approximately half a million troy ounces of gold (about 15.5 tons) in its area, but the goal is significantly higher than that.
— In five years, we should ideally know of two million troy ounces of gold. Our gold production could then amount to 100,000 troy ounces, Vyhtinen continues.
This would mean a seven-fold production increase, and with today’s gold price, which is around €106 per gram, such production would be worth approximately €330 million annually.
1,200 meters underground
Endomines currently operates two mines in Ilomantsi – the Pampalo mine and the Hosko mine. At the Pampalo mine, work is now being conducted at a depth of 900 meters, and by 2032, operations will be 1.2 kilometers underground.
The company invests four to six million euros annually in prospecting to find new gold deposits. Operations are growing rapidly – the company has about a hundred employees and recently hired 20 new staff members.
Ahead of autumn’s test drilling at the Ukko deposit, the CEO says the excitement keeps him awake at night.
— It’s so exciting and thrilling to wait for the results, says Vyhtinen.
Helsinki District Court rules that Finland lacked jurisdiction to prosecute the crew of oil tanker Eagle S.
Harsh criticism is now directed at authorities’ boarding of the vessel in international waters – an action that risks becoming very costly for Finnish taxpayers.
The ruling from Helsinki District Court is a heavy setback for Finnish authorities who dramatically boarded the oil tanker Eagle S in international waters last year. The district court establishes that Finland simply lacked the right to prosecute the crew for the alleged cable breaks.
Captain Davit Vadatchkoria and officers Robert Egizaryan and Santosh Kumar Chaurasia were charged with aggravated sabotage and aggravated disruption of postal and telecommunications traffic. The charges also included alternative, lesser criminal classifications: sabotage, aggravated vandalism and causing public danger.
But since the cable breaks – which involved five underwater cables – occurred outside Finland’s territorial waters, Finnish criminal law cannot be applied, the court states.
“International waters – period”
Lawyer Herman Ljungberg, who represents shipping company Caravella FZ LLC, has consistently argued that the action was illegal.
— The damage occurred in international waters, period. Therefore Finland has nothing to do with the matter. Only the flag state, in this case the Cook Islands, has jurisdiction, he tells Svenska Yle.
Ljungberg goes further and calls the incident an illegal hijacking.
— The boarding should absolutely be investigated. We already filed a police report about the boarding at an earlier stage, but it was left without investigation, he says.
District court refers to maritime law convention
In its ruling, the district court states that the incident was an accident and refers to articles in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The court does note that the act according to the charges had caused “exceptionally large” economic damage, but still establishes that a Finnish court cannot try the case.
The court’s conclusion underscores the inappropriateness of the authorities’ actions: They boarded a vessel in international waters, held it for over two months and brought charges – despite lacking jurisdiction.
Taxpayers will pay the bill
The direct cost of the failed legal process already amounts to €193,000 in legal costs that the Finnish state must reimburse the three acquitted defendants.
But that could be the beginning of a significantly more expensive bill. The shipping company is preparing extensive damage claims.
— It could involve damages of tens of millions of euros. The shipping company believes the Finnish state owes them money due to the illegal hijacking of the vessel, says Ljungberg.
He points to the cargo – primarily unleaded gasoline – allegedly being damaged during the months the vessel was held, as well as lost rental income while the ship stood idle outside Sköldvik, Finland.
“Shadow fleet” – a loaded term without clear definition
The case has been characterized by strong words and dramatic headlines. When the EU introduced new sanctions in May 2025 against what is called “the Russian shadow fleet,” Eagle S was placed on a list of so-called shadow vessels.
The term “shadow vessel” or “shadow fleet” is used by politicians and in media, but there is no unified, official definition of what is meant. The concept generally seems to refer to older vessels with complicated ownership structures that transport Russian oil, possibly to circumvent international sanctions.
That a vessel appears on the EU’s sanctions list does not, however, affect the question of jurisdiction. In the Eagle S case, the court establishes that Finland lacked the right to prosecute the crew, regardless of the vessel’s status as a listed shadow ship.
What happens now?
The prosecutors, represented by Deputy Prosecutor General Jukka Rappe, have not yet commented on the ruling. Rappe has previously unsuccessfully tried to justify why Finland should have jurisdiction:
— In this case, the cable capacity has been so large that in my opinion it is clear that data communication and the electrical system have been affected in Finland. Therefore the act is considered to have been performed in Finland even though the location where the cables were cut lies outside Finnish borders, Rappe told Svenska Yle in August.
Now prosecutors face the choice of appealing to the Court of Appeal or accepting defeat.
It is also possible that the Cook Islands, as flag state for Eagle S, chooses to take over the investigation – if they would even consider there is a case to investigate.
For the three crew members, who spent months in Finland with travel bans and obligations to report to police weekly, the matter is now over. But for the Finnish state and taxpayers, the consequences of the hasty boarding could prove far more costly than those responsible originally imagined.
