Tor Erik Schrøder/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Just a few weeks ago, a 1,300-pound walrus named Freya was enjoying the sort of Hot Girl Summer the average pinniped could only dream of. She’d left her native Arctic waters and recently ended up off the coast of Oslo, Norway, where she delighted onlookers and the animal-loving internet by hauling herself onto small boats, eating scallops and mussels, and generally living a life of leisure and glamour.

Her appearance in the Oslo Fjord was extremely unusual, since walruses are wary of humans and tend to stay farther away off the Norwegian coast. The novelty of it all made her an instant sensation; even Judy Woodruff couldn’t contain her herself in this whimsical summertime ode to Freya on PBS NewsHour earlier this month:

But as Freya’s legend grew, more and more folks wanted to see her up close. As the New York Times points out, the Oslo Fjord is full of water-going recreationists in the summer, and people started swimming with Freya, taking her picture, and even throwing things at her—so much that she had begun chasing off paddle boarders and kayakers. The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries warned the public to stay away from Freya, for their safety and hers. Last week, officials said they were weighing several options, including relocating Freya, but warned she might have to be killed if people wouldn’t listen.

Alas, people didn’t listen. And so on Sunday, Norwegian officials euthanized Freya.

In a statement, Frank Bakke-Jensen, the director general of the directorate of fisheries, cited the “continued threat to human safety” in making the decision to kill Freya. “We have sympathies for the fact that the decision can cause reactions with the public, but I am firm that this was the right call,” Bakke-Jensen said. “We have great regard for animal welfare, but human life and safety must take precedence.” 

Rune Aae, a biologist at the University of South-Eastern Norway, called the decision “too hasty a conclusion” in a Facebook post Sunday. Aae had been tracking Freya and posting the results on a Google map so that people would know where the walrus was and to give her wide berth. “Everyone would be able to know where Freya was and could act accordingly, i.e. not engage in water activities near her,” he wrote.

As wildlife ecologist and conservation biologist David Steen has pointed out on Twitter, the circumstances surrounding Freya’s death have become all too common. Humans, as you may have noticed, are pretty bad at listening—and particularly bad at listening to officials urging them to give wild animals some damn space. Steen included Freya in a thread pointing out other recent examples of too-close human-animal interactions, including links to bisons goring visitors at Yellowstone National Park earlier this summer and hordes of gawking tourists crowding the banks of a crocodile-filled river at Australia’s Kakadu National Park. Unlike those other cases, though, Freya paid for this sort of human ignorance with her life.

Freya didn’t deserve this. And we didn’t deserve her.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate