What were the dumb shits who run this facility doing while this was happening?

So some PETA nit wit wit decided to save the minks by releasing them. Good job, minks are carnivores who will eat whatever animal, bird, or fish that they can catch, including pets. So instead of saving animal lives, they effectively have unleashed little killing machines in that area.

Oh, did I mention that they are also cannibals. Great job dumbass.

Edit to say I have no information saying that PETA is involved in this. This has happened multiple times in multiple countries, always with the same result.

I guess politicians are not the only ones to ignore history.

That is a giant amount of sharp little teeth released in this area. Would not want to be the neighbors right now.

Say goodbye to songbirds and any bird that nests in the area.

There are bans to weasels as pets, in many areas, because they are so destructive to non native environments. Even one getting loose can reign havoc. This is definitely enough to maintain a breeding popatuon. I hope that they are at least a native type to the area.

You'd think that a facility that had so many of them would need some security to make sure things like this wouldn't happen, since the consequences can be so severe environmentally.

We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes.

They'll wipe out the minks.

But aren't the snakes even worse?

Yes, but we're prepared for that.

We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.

Then we're stuck with gorillas!

No, that's the beautiful part.

When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

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And this is how you get an ecological disaster

Maybe there was more than one eco terrorist.

It's time for weasel stomping day!

Well it's PETA so par for the course. They kill animals constantly.

I used to work on a mink farm, mean little fuckers.

So, it's going to be open season for mink in that county this winter?

According to the article, likely in bed, asleep, as people tend to be at night.

Bad for birds hell on the rodent population. But the farmers may see increased yield from crops with the removal of other species which feed on/destroy said crops. Lose the chicken but get more corn. I'm interested to see how it plays out in years to come.

Once they’ve decimated all the wildlife in the area most will die of starvation, or the article says they’re cannibalistic. Even worse.

Hopefully you're right. Just get a bunch of trappers with no limit it'll help sort it out.

By all means, let’s blame the owner rather than the criminal.

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Large scale animal facilities generally have high tech security systems throughout and often have staff onsite 24/7 for emergencies as one this size should have had.

That is a good point that I had not considered.

Okay, but did they not have any night watchmen or what? Like... mink fur as a product is both valuable and very controversial, they had to know that it's a bad idea to not have anyone watching them overnight.

I'm not a big fan of the mink family as one ripped my chickens apart for funsies, but the owner was likely a godawful person too. That many minks on a farm would have kept them in tiny cages. When you cage minks like that then go crazy, spend their lives spinning in circles and bashing their heads on the sides of the cages. Then they just leave them with open head wounds since taking care of them would cut from profits. We had one not far from us and an employee snuck out videos. So horrible. The animal welfare people knew what was happening and barely took action, I wouldn't be surprised if someone got desperate and thought they were helping. Without actually thinking it through.

While I agree with you that doesn’t justify breaking and enter, vandalism, and theft. There are many things I despise that are legal, but I do believe in the rule of law.

How do they not know how many?

25,000-40,000 is a very wide range..

Every farm I've been on has known exactly how many animals were on site.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the American Government! Solving problems the best way possible since forever, because that's how long we've been here. Certainly no one else here before us......

Anyway, next week we will discuss our plans for inflation! hint hint it has something to do with corporate tax breaks and printing 🎶extra money🎶!

Seriously, wide range. I was curious about that too.

By all means, let’s not criticize the bank manager who leaves the vault door open every night.

Depends on how many were killed by each other.

Kill off the birds and rodents and then expect the insect population to explode. Get enough of a grasshopper population boom and they could go full locust and your problem turns biblical. This generally is going to be fucked in various ways over the next 5-15 years because of one "save the poor minks" guy that didn't think beyond the "???" step.

👍🏻

farming critters in such horrific, intensive conditions is how we get ecological disasters

maybe the facility shouldn't exist in the first place

I mean, they're being held in nightmare conditions so

Being the omnivorous creatures that minks are those locusts will get it too. It was by all means a terrible idea to let them loose. It's about managing the best of a bad situation at this point.

I mean it has nothing to do with conditions regardless lol it’s in their nature.

What were they being raised for?

I'm pretty sure this one is on the asshole who let them out.

I live in Ohio and this might be the most Van Wert thing ever, lol.

>At least one unknown suspect released the minks from a farm overnight Tuesday. Officials say they pose a risk to local wildlife and livestock.

This is literally the first line. The sheriff is investigating a person who released the minks, the government had nothing to do with it and didn't release them .

Dude, understand context and jokes better..... I know that already.

The comment I responded to is written in such a way as to imply that the sheriff ls department or another authority system was making plans to release various other invasive animals in order to solve this issue. That's funny, get it? Anyone trying to solve the issue of an invasive species by releasing another invasive species is an idiot.

I made another joke about how the government in general is made up of idiots and this is the kind of solution that they might come up with. It's a joke, it's not meant to be taken seriously.....

Get it now?

Mice and rats won’t be an issue for a while

Or they'll be ran over by cars

I have this image of a mink horde swarming over the countryside devouring every thing in their path - kind of like the Ghost Army in LOTR: ROTK

Fur.

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It's possible that not all the minks escaped, so they have to count what's remaining to work out how many got out.

You can't even own rabbits in my state of Australia.

Grew up there. Can confirm.

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The comment you replied to is a Simpsons quote.

That's because Emporer Nasi Goreng built the wall to keep them out.

Birds and insects, also livestock, rabbits and any other animal in the vicinity. This county is fucked.

If, by any chance, the person that did it thought they were standing up for animal rights, they actually just committed something akin to an act of terrorism against the local environment that will have consequences for decades. Wildlife in that region will be devastated.

Edit: To be clear, I believe that mink farms are abhorrent and should banned. But unleashing tens of thousands of predators into the local ecosystem is quite terrible.

Saint*

It’s a good summer to get into making fur moccasins in Ohio

Absolutely correct.

While most will likely starve, be killed by accidents, culled, or eaten by predators it's very likely some will survive and learn to adapt causing damage to the environment for a long time, all thanks to some dumb fucking animal rights activists

There are better ways to fight it than letting them out. Now thousands and thousands more animals will die. The person that did it deserves a lobotomy.

Oh ok cool thanks

Slightly more cute, though.

But only slightly.

I’m going with ‘It takes two to Tango’ on this one. Can’t release 50,000 Mink if no one has 50,000 mink all in the same spot.

I know it's wrong, but stories about people releasing minks from mink farms always make me laugh.

Yes, this has happened more than once.

Thank goodness at least they are a native species (if they’re American mink at least). They have natural predators, and their populations will reduce and stabilize over time. Better than if they were a potentially invasive species we might never get rid of.

You'd think that it wouldn't be legal to farm them to begin with.

The range between actual and insurance claim.

🏅🏅

"Born free, as free as the ..." squish

We wreak havoc, and we reign over.

There goes that ecosystem

As he relied “understand jokes better” 😂😂

I used to live near there. They have a bunch of black squirrels that were amazing to see driving through. Guess they won't be there much longer.

And you call these Steamed Hams despite the fact that they are clearly grilled?

LOL

If tens of thousands of mink were released, it’ll be hundreds of thousands of animals killed. Minks are voracious killers. I’d be surprised if anything smaller than a Labrador remains there in a matter of months.

I f this is in America and they are American mink, I doubt it.

Is that like a state of depression? Loneliness? Anxiousness?

And also thanks to some dumb fucking people supporting factory farms...which cause damage to the environment. Looks like a "fuck everybody" type situation 🤷🏼‍♂️

Edit: Sure, downvote "factory farms are bad" as the wrong take. Lol...only on Reddit is being a good human the wrong way to go.

A state of boganity.

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Kinda how humans like to fuck each other over given any opportunity. Just our nature!

>Depends on how many were killed by each other.

They still would have been released, before they killed each other.

True

So when those mink destroy the local wildlife and drive species to extinction, collapsing the local ecology and eventually all those mink just starve because they've outcompeted the local wildlife, what then? Is that dipshit still a Saint?

Don't be stupid. Don't solve one problem by creating a far worse problem.

Certainly a lot softer too

Dorselesness

This feels like a quote from a book or tv show. I love it

I absolutely agree!

Why not both you dolt

I agree with you. The risk of them getting loose and the issues that will follow are so large that whatever tax dollars they brought in from the business are wiped out. And that's keeping the issue of animal welfare to the side and just looking at a cold cost breakdown.

Based

The story I heard (USA public education), about rabbits in Australia, was that they aren't native, and are a big problem with native ecosystems. I heard that some British governor imported them, so that he and his cronies could have their jolly, gentilemanly hunts.

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I’m pretty sure it is. Saw another person referencing the same sequence of animals…

I'll keep that in mind. Nonsarcastically, thanks. I know my grammar isn't ways the best.

It's an episode of the simpsons...they visit Australia and ruin it. make it into the hellscape that it apparently already was.

We know that the citizen/subjects definitely, can’t shoot any invading forces to Australia.

The Mink is indigenous to North America. They are not pet weasels. I agree with you that it’s an ecological Nightmare.

Have you every tried to count the damn things? Won't stand still for a single moment.

Can we discuss how the article felt the need to discuss the minks per capita of the town and county?

Coyote, fox, hawks, eagle, turkey buzzard population is about to EXPLODE!

A mink farmer stands astraddle a chest high metal cow gate overlooking an undulating sea of shiny fur. A bead of sweat rolls down his face, cutting through dust and dirt. He wipes it away with the back of a mink gloved hand holding a mink fur cowboy hat that matches his mink fur coat.

"Hmmm... 25 to 40,000, I'd say"

An older, grizzled mink farmer draped in even more mink fur apparel stands some way back looks into the distance, sure not to look at the hypnotic sheet of tangled, squiggling minks.

"Yuh, sounds about right." As he nods to an eager, fresh-faced teen who dutifully writes the numbers down in a mink fur bound notebook with a mink fur pom-pom adorned pencil.

Bruh there are black squirrels all over the mid Atlantic. Not like they’re going to disappear from the face of the planet

Yep, same with foxes

Apparently already happening. Rumor is they're having to use snowplows to clean the highway near the farm...

I think the people who did this are idiots, but terrorism? Unless they did this with the sole intent to destroy the ecosystem, I think calling it terrorism is a stretch. Idiocy is more fitting.

I'm picturing this Gov'ner dude showing up and being like, "whatever shall I hunt to pass the time?" And then looks at the native wildlife, and is just like "nope" and then sends to daddy's estate to have foxes and bunnies shipped in.

https://www.farmtransparency.org/facilities/zx0hb-lion-farms-usa-mink-farm

Is it loaded language? Sure. Is it hyperbolic? In terms of impact, I honestly don't think so. If one is advocating on behalf of an ecosystem, as is sometimes the case both rhetorically and legally, some human terms are going to be applied. No one literally wages war against the environment and no one can literally terrorize a habitat, but the end result is equivalent: human-caused carnage endured by organisms that can't defend themselves from people's actions.

Still, your objection is valid and I'll try to rephrase it.

Thanks, I had to look it up lol

I’m guessing no one will be leaving home unarmed for a few months.

The local small wildlife populations is fucking fucked.

And that’s the way we like it. Notice we are not going around shooting up our schools either?

I hate this world

Not with the emu guards on the job.

And the drop bears holding the flank

So release them and create an ecological disaster anyways? You don't seem very smart...

Don’t worry, 80% were quickly caught..

So that is maybe, at most 8000 blood thirsty minks on the loose… should be fine 🧐

Gorilla army attack!!! 🫵🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍🦍

I mean, essentially yeah. I guess kangaroos and emus are too intimidating compared to the usual small game they hunted. Our troubles on the mainland (Tasmania had a rabbit problem first) stems from just 24 rabbits that were released. For a while they were kept under control by native predators but natural selection meant that they got hardier, until we had a population explosion. In the 1950s we deliberately spread a rabbit-killing virus, which worked for a bit, but they’ve adapted partial immunity to that now.

Haha, As an Australian this gives me a strong sense of deja vu.

For those who may not know, European settlers introduced rabbits for hunting, but they spread quicker than they could hunt so they introduced foxes now over 150 years later both rabbits and foxes are wreaking havok to our environment.

And they didn't learn their lesson so similar thing when they introduced sugar cane, they brought cane beetles with them so later introduced cane toads to eat the beetles so now we have plague proportions of cane toads because all the native animals die when they eat them.

I'm all for preventing animal abuse but releasing them to the wild wasn't the way to go about it, by doing so they've caused far more death and suffering than they prevented (including for the minks which are likely to either cannibalize each other or starve to death)

THAT'S A LOTTA CORPSES

I live about 45 minutes from this farm.

So badly do I want grab a bucket and a cage. But those fuckers are mean

Fucking dork

Only Weird Al could make that song wholesome

Heh, now they get given rabbit aids/Ebola. And as horrible as that may sound, is still only making a dent in their population

I don't think it's the Australia episode (could be wrong), I think it's the episode when bart shoots the bird with the bb gun. Feels bad so starts taking care of the eggs which turn out to be some invasive lizard.

The Australia episode he just over runs Australia with frogs.

I swear I have seen this scene in my brain before. Right down to the hairy pencil topper

There is absolutely nothing to be concerned about, unless the "fresh kill" diet of an intermediate cross transfer species for horrific viruses should cause concern.

I'm going to be honest. I really didn't think we had mink farms in the U.S. any more.

I'm an Aussie and had no idea owning them was banned in QLD. Wild!

I found it wild when I moved to WA and people just didn't give a shit. They were like "oh look at that cute little wild rabbit!"

"uhhh you mean terrible invasive species we should want to kill on sight, right?"

"... You monster!"

Yeah, it's episode 3 from season 10.

Bart the Mother

Bart accidentally kills a mother bird with Nelson's BB gun, and tries his best to raise the mother's eggs on his own. But when the hatchlings turn out to be a pair of destructive lizards that harvest nests for their own survival, the town's bird population is placed at great risk.

I'm in Victoria and they are fucking EVERYWHERE around my parents place in the outer burbs. Good thing is they are suicidal on the roads and end up getting run over by accident (and sometimes not I'm sure) a lot.

They'll stabilize eventually, but releasing that many is going to cause a shit ton of problems.

Yeah, it's wild in a few states how lacking the feral/invasive control is.

WA had foxes just roaming through my suburb in Perth, you'd call the council and they were like "and?"

"and they're eating all the fucking turtle eggs you wankers are spending my tax dollars trying to protect, fucking shoot them"

Anyone that farms minks should die slow. Assholes

Oh we have heaps of foxes too, they help deal with the rabbits!

No cane toads at least!

No cane toad golf either.

Same as outdoor cats

And the latest repost says 10k..

Seriously...did these people not have any alarms or guards or anything like that? Or have them, but in a way that they were easily circumvented? It really shouldn't be this easy to let that many of any animal out, let alone something as dangerous as minks.

Access denied

Boiological invasion at it s best. Same happend in germany now. Its a gg

Eh dropping a hyper concentration of any organism into a small area will cause a huge amount of ecological damage even of the animal is native. There's a reason all the big conservation reserves in Africa still practise controlled culling of endangered species.

It actually, is not.

Kinda seems like the first thing there to mess up the original habitants was Europeans.

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Minks can eat other mammals as large as rabbits? That’s very… creepy.

But emu hunting should be fun. I gather the usual method is to use an artillery regiment.

To really hunt an emu, you want to lay on your back and cycle your legs in the air. Then when they get close enough, you jump up and grab one. Here’s a demonstration of the basic idea

Australia: Where the ads are as odd as the people.

Don't forget that the Americans had a Shakespeare based animal society that introduced a lot of stupid things like starlings to North America that now devastate regions.

Very true.

It wouldn't exactly be a stretch if we considered Europeans an invasive species

Me too. This is a town that is proud of their invasive black squirrels. Some random person imported them from Canada or Michigan and they have run off the native squirrel population.

A mink in every pot!

The black squirrels in Van Wert are invasive and were brought in from Canada by a local resident in the 1970s.

This was at least the second time this facility was attacked. In 2013 several hundred were released.

I read this all in Zapp Brannigans voice. Very fitting

I mean... no not at all.

Sure it's disastrous for the animal being farmed (because they die and then get skinned), but it doesn't really affect the surrounding area.

At least, nowhere near as much as releasing them so they kill every single rodent and bird in like a 1,500 mile radius

PETA did this in the UK years ago. Completely fucked up the local animal life.

No worry’s there, if rabbits ever show up? The drop bears will get them

all the downvotes.... the people don't want to accept it

Homo sapiens are an invasive species, worse than any parasite. Parasites don't usually try to kill their host, because that would be self detrimental. We have powerful brains with self awareness, yet we choose destruction over sustainability.

I mean, technically locusts and grasshoppers aren't the same thing and grasshoppers don't swarm like locusts do in the right (wrong) conditions.

Don't forget cats.

And I say this as a cat person.

But they are fucking with Australia's wildlife.

Just wait till they team up with the 30-50 feral hogs.