“I support the decision to euthanize Freya,” Jonas Gahr Støre told public broadcaster NRK on Monday. “It was the right decision. I’m not surprised that this has led to a lot of international backlash. Sometimes we have to make unpopular decisions.” Freya, named after the Norse goddess of beauty and love, had become a popular attraction since arriving on July 17 in the waters off the Norwegian capital, where crowds flocked to watch her sunbathe or sleep on boats. Norway’s fisheries directorate said the walrus was euthanized “based on an overall assessment of the threat to human safety” after the public ignored warnings not to get too close to her, often with small children, to be photographed. Other reports showed people swimming alongside the walrus, throwing things at it and surrounding it in large numbers. On one occasion, police had to evacuate and close a swimming area after Freya chased a woman into the sea. The agency concluded that “the potential for potential harm to humans was high and animal welfare was not maintained.” Its director, Frank Bakke-Jensen, said other solutions, including moving Freya elsewhere, could not guarantee her safety. “There were too many dangerous situations,” he told Norwegian tabloid VG, adding that while the agency understood the decision could “cause public backlash,” he was “firm that this was the right call. We have great respect for animal welfare, but human life and safety must come first.” Walruses usually live much further north, in Arctic waters, but Freya has previously been spotted in the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark. Opponents of the decision to euthanize her, which caused an uproar on social media, said more should have been done to prevent it. Siri Martinsen of animal rights group NOAH said the spectators should have been fined first, and biologist Rune Aae told Norwegian News Agency it was “incredibly sad” that an animal was destroyed “simply because we didn’t treat it right”. . Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Christian Steel of the environmental group Sabima told NRK that it was important the management released full documentation about who made the decision to euthanize Freya and for what reasons. “Management can’t keep it a secret just to make things convenient for themselves,” Steel said. “They have a reason for that. There must have been professionals in the picture who assessed that this animal was stressed.” Eivind Trædal, a member of the Oslo city council, told VG that the decision to put down the water walrus represented a “collective failure”, while Truls Gulowsen of the Nature Conservancy called the decision “shameful”. People were “behaving like idiots in the face of nature,” Gulowsen said. “Elsewhere, the authorities managed to keep them at bay and people managed to exercise caution. But here in Oslo Fjord, nobody could be bothered – so we kill it instead.’ However, zoologist Per Espen Fjeld told VG on Monday that it was “obvious” that Freya would eventually have to be culled, adding that the decision was fully justified and had no consequences for the future of the species. “You can’t expect 1.6 million people not to swim in the Oslo fjord,” he said. “People were out swimming and suddenly there he was, a meter away. If 600 pounds of muscle and mass hits you even a little bit, everybody knows what happens.” Senior adviser at the Norwegian Environment Agency and Nature Inspectorate, Espen Fjeld, said that animals can be dangerous and it is sometimes necessary to put them down, “as long as this does not endanger the survival of the population. There are 30,000 walruses in the North Atlantic.” He said it was far more important to take care of a species’ habitat — by stopping oil and gas exploration in the Barents Sea, for example — than trying to take care of an individual animal that had drifted too far from home. Espen Fjeld said Freya had caused a “Bambi effect”. “It becomes a matter of concern, it takes a name, it is referred to in human terms,” he said. “But taking care of this individual has nothing to do with taking care of the walrus population.”
