Are the 6500 "liberated" English minks still alive?

Per this Snopes story of three years ago, did the thousands of minks released from the mink farm in the UK ever establish a population or did they die off?

Marauding Minks

I can’t connect it to the Snopes story particularly, but yes there is a feral population of minks over here. Apart from deliberate releases by animal liberationists, they have escaped from farms by themselves. They are a serious nuisance to indiginous wildlife too.

Here you go

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/147710.stm

There is an interesting differance in national opinions illustrated by this.

In certain parts of Russia mink are considered valuable and worthy of some husbandry in the wild.They see otters as a serious threat to them, an otter will easil kill a mink and when hungry may prey on them, since mink often hunt near the waters edge - result is that otters are seen among the mink trappers as vermin.

In the UK when all these mink were set free there was some concern for the local wildlife, particualarly otters which had only recently been re-established in rivers nearby - here its the mink that are seen as vermin.

Well, you know what they say–one man’s mink is an otter man’s vermin.

I almost suspect that casdave and Ethilrist are the same person. No way you get that perfect a setup. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say this whole thread was a setup.

Bravo!