# Whatever happened to all those minks released in the UK several ago? Are they all dead?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 12, 2006, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131 "2006-11-12T19:15:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2006, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131/1 "2006-11-12T19:15:32Z")
[Re this story](http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/minks.htm), what happened over time?
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### Author:  [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2006, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131/2 "2006-11-13T04:47:06Z")
Apparently it’s still an ongoing, if low-key, problem; [Link,](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_islands/5306182.stm) with sidebar links to related stories.
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### Author:  [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2006, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131/3 "2006-11-13T06:38:04Z")
The BBC, in **Duck Duck Goose** ’s link, misused the word “decimated.” Decimated means killing one tenth of a given group. According to the figures they gave, the minks are killing more than 90% of the birds studied. That’s much worse than decimated.
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### Author:  [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2006, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131/4 "2006-11-13T08:32:17Z")
Mink have also been blamed for killing off most of our [water voles](http://www.wildlifetrust.org.uk/urbanwt/WIS_pages/Water%20Voles.htm). I read somewhere that their numbers have declined by something like 90% because of attacks by released mink
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2006, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131/5 "2006-11-13T14:28:11Z")
[QUOTE=AskNott]
The BBC, in **Duck Duck Goose** ’s link, misused the word “decimated.” Decimated means killing one tenth of a given group. According to the figures they gave, the minks are killing more than 90% of the birds studied. That’s much worse than decimated.
[/QUOTE]
Don’t get the original use of the word mixed up with its proper use now. I haven’t looked up the definition in every dictionary but in [this one](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decimated) the original usage is now definition #3. The BBC used it correctly.
> [@](#):
>
> Usage Note: Decimate originally referred to the killing of every tenth person, a punishment used in the Roman army for mutinous legions. Today this meaning is commonly extended to include the killing of any large proportion of a group. Sixty-six percent of the Usage Panel accepts this extension in the sentence The Jewish population of Germany was decimated by the war, even though it is common knowledge that the number of Jews killed was much greater than a tenth of the original population. However, when the meaning is further extended to include large-scale destruction other than killing, as in The supply of fresh produce was decimated by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, only 26 percent of the Panel accepts the usage.
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### Author:  [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2006, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131/6 "2006-11-13T17:21:05Z")
[QUOTE=Loach]
Don’t get the original use of the word mixed up with its proper use now. I haven’t looked up the definition in every dictionary but in [this one](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decimated) the original usage is now definition #3. The BBC used it correctly.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll accept the broader definition, but I feel the word is not strong enough for a 90% decline. That’s near-extinction, that’s massacre.
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### Author:  [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2006, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131/7 "2006-11-13T19:29:11Z")
Definitions of “decimated” aside…if you read both links, I’m not sure **Duck Duck Goose** ’s linked story is about the same issue.
The original story of the “release” by activists cited in Snopes contains this passage:
> [@](#):
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> Released into the rich countryside of England’s southern coast,
and, revealingly, this one:
> [@](#):
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> Webb said the released minks could be expected to “disperse” among an existing British wild mink population already numbering in the tens of thousands. Those wild minks are, ironically, the descendants of earlier fur-farm escapees imported from America to England by mink breeders in the 1920s.
Yet the story about current mink problems refers to the [Hebridean Mink Project](http://www.snh.org.uk/scottish/wisles/address.asp) (although it’s misspelled “Hedridean”), and the picture caption refers to minks as “not native to the islands”.
It also contains the passage:
> [@](#):
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> The animals were introduced to the islands when mink were farmed for their fur in the 1950s and 60s.
Without getting into defending the well-publicized release (purportedly by animal-rights activists, which seems logical, although no one has claimed “credit”), it seems likely to me that the mink release on the south coast of England is not the source of the minks ravaging the Scottish Hebrides. Could those minks have migrated to the islands?
Minks escaped from the original fur trade in the 50s and 60s seem a likelier source.
I can’t say if any of the minks from the release (or their descendants) are still a problem in the south of England or elsewhere. And I’m not defending the release itself.
But animal activists get painted with a pretty broad brush sometimes, and although I assume this was just a quick search and not a frame job, it rubs me the wrong way to see activists take the blame for something that apparently was an _industry_-created problem.
Let’s try to stick to the facts in the fight against ignorance.
Sailboat
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### Author:  [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-all-those-minks-released-in-the-uk-several-ago-are-they-all-dead/380131/8 "2006-11-13T19:42:16Z")
Another fur-farm escapee was the [Coypu](http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th1f.htm) They became pests in the British countryside . Their burrows undermined river banks and they could cause damage to young cereal crops. Unlike the mink these animals have now been eradicated. I wish getting rid of mink was as easy.