Knowledge is to know when you don't know

The last day of 2012 came with a surpise. A young walrus had turned up in the small town of Kristiansund, not far from where I grew up. Despite my ten years of experience in the Arctic, where I have amongst other things worked with guiding film crews and photographers to awesome walrus experiences, I found much joy in knowing that one was seen not far from where I was born. Well out of its normal range. I changed my plans for new years eve celebration, so that I would be ready early next morning for the 2.5hrs drive to Kristiansund to hopefully get to see this animal myself.

Despite that pictures on the internet, as well as friends’ description of the behaviour did not give any signs of weakness or sickness in this animal, I was unfortunately not very surprised when I got the message only a few hours later that local wildlife authorities had decided to kill the walrus. It had been shot dead, and then towed out to sea to get rid of the carcass. The decision was based on a number of reasons that all led to the conclusion of a very sick and injured animal according to the wildlife authority and the Food Safety Authority. Despite their suspision of sickness, they did not bother to take any blood or tissue samples of the animal before they let the walrus sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Some of the criteria used in their assessment were that this animal had red eyes, broken one of its tusks, reddish/pinkish skin, it did let people get fairly close to it, a small wound in one of the flippers and the fact that it had turned up about 1500km south of its normal distribution. All clear signs of sickness and incapability to recover according to the authoroties in charge. Of course, there were not given any concerns amongst either the local wildlife authority nor the Food Safety authority to the fact that they had absolutely no experience with the natural behaviour of walrus. This was ignored completely, and it was so important to kill this animal so quickly that they did not even take their time for a google search. Something which had taken shorter time than loading the rifle. If they hadn’t been in such a hurry to kill the poor animal, their google search would have shown them thousands of pictures of healthy walruses looking exactly the same as the one laying on the jetty in front of them. It was considered a waste of time to call anyone with walrus experience. For those of you that dont know much about the walrus, I can assure you that the whole list of ”signs of weakness” mentioned above is acutally characteristica of the walrus as a species and very typical for healthy walruses. In other words, completely normal.

Red eyes is a common trait of walrus - this one is photographed in Svalbard.

The walrus is a protected species in Norway, and on the Red list (list over threatened and endangered species) which ideally should have made the respective authorities take extra care in such a case and make sure they were doing the right thing. Even so, I think it is only in Norway this way of wildlife managing can happen. Unfortunately, they showed the same ignorance and arrogance of other expertise that they show on a regular basis when it comes to assessing wild animal health issues in many other cases. Compared to the job they are set to do, it is almost unbelievable the lack of knowledge they posess as well as the complete lack of will to cooperate with other expertise such as behaviour biolgists in some cases. It is an arrogance towards wildlife and other people that is unparallel.

It has been a repeating event, and so many animals have been killed without reason in this country. This incident is now getting a whole lot of media coverage thanks to dedicated people working independent of each others, and reacting of this way to govern our nature. We have also gone to the police, so that they are forced to looked at it in a more formal way.

I have mentioned it before in this blog. Norwegians are seeing themselves as a people of nature. The truth is very different and the sad fact is that we have removed ourselves so far away from nature that we have entered a sort of paranoid state, where all animals that are behaving a little bit away from the normal are considered dangerous or sick. At the same time, Norway is almost a century behind the rest of the world when it comes to nature conservation and wildlife mangement, where our goverment still thinks that the only way to manage nature is through shooting and killing. It is really sad, but I do hope that the media attention this walrus have gotten can give way to a change in how our wildlife authorities are handling these sort of cases in the future. Their arrogance have to stop.

Pink skin and reddish mouth - also completely normal in walrus as shown
 in this Svalbard native. 

….KNOWLEDGE IS TO KNOW WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW….

-EG-

The Owl Whisperer

I have finally found some time to sit in front of my computer. It is something I try to avoid as much as possible – but unfortunately a very important and big part of a wildlife photographer’s job. During the last two weeks, I have edited most of my images I’ve taken this year and I have now about 800 or so fresh images ready for my agents to sell.

What is nice about the editing process is that one gets a chance to re-live the many amazing experiences I have had while taking the images. One of my strongest and best wildlife encounters this year involves a short-eared owl. Last year was a very good rodent year, meaning many owls and raptors had a good breeding success in the Scandinavian forest and mountains. This year however, as expected, the rodent population had crashed completely. When last year’s young owls returned to the places they were born to try to start breeding themselves, they only found areas where food was very scarce. Many of the owls were very hungry, and needed to search for food elsewhere. Many short-eared owls were hunting during daytime and stayed in the low land was a good evidence of their food shortage.

In end of May, I was searching for short-eared owls to photograph in one of my local patches. I was pleased to find one hunting over a nearby field, but before I arrived to a good position the owl disappeared out of sight and perched in a ditch. I placed myself about a 100m away, and since there was no one else around I risked making a fool of myself and started to make squeaking noises with my lips. I was hoping my strange way of communicating would attract some attention, but never imagined what happened next. A few seconds after I started making the noise, the owl lifted from the ditch and came straight towards me. As I was looking through my camera, the owl just started to fill the viewfinder more and more. I couldn’t focus properly, and I realised the owl was not to turn around. It then landed on my 70-300mm lens while I was holding it – only about 30cm from my nose!  Not easy to photograph birds when they sit on top of the lens. It sat for a few seconds while we were staring into each other eyes before the apparently very hungry owl flew off. I have never communicated so well with an owl ever before! A true moment to remember and experiences like this is the very reason why I love being a wildlife photographer!

 

Not everyone is as pleased as me to see a short-eared owl..

- EG -

Arctic fox

A long overdue update. The summer and autumn has been very busy, and only the last weeks have I found some time to sit in front of the computer. An eventful summer, where lots of fun and challenges has made life dynamic and interesting as it always should be. However, it means that I havent had time to edit any images since April. These Arctic foxes I got to spend two days with this summer.

Safety in friends - always good not be alone when meeting challenges in life..

Black & White portrait

- EG -

The size of a marabou

Using contrasts in your composition, is sometimes a good tool to help you tell a story with your image. Contrasts can be used to enforce your punchline in the images as well. In these images taken in Ethiopia, I use different bird species (which actually are not that small) to give a scale that helps the spectatour to understand how big the marabou really is. It's one of the largest bird species on this planet. The upper one shows marabou and white-faced ducks, and the lower one is of a black-winged stilt and the marabou. The variation within the bird fauna never stops to amaze me.

-EG-

45 deaths per hour!

At this time of the year, about 2 millions of these animals are released into the wild Norwegian mountains without virtually any supervision. About 130 000 of them will never arrive home after the free ranging grazing season ends around September some time. That means that 45 sheep dies pr hour in the Norwegian nature during the 4 months ahead!

Norwegian sheep farmers blame the large predators like wolf, wolverine, brown bear, lynx and golden eagle for their big losses, but the thruth is rather different. The fact is that in 2010, about 35 000 sheep and lambs were economically compensated as killed by a predator by Norwegian authorities. Only about 2500 (1,9% of total loss) of these were actually documented killed by a predator. The rest is killed by deseases, broken legs, infections, rock slides, fly larvae invasions, plant poisoning etc etc...in other words - a lot of slow deaths and animal suffering!

Even though Norwegian government and nature management authorities (Directorate of Nature Management) acts like big predators are the main problem for Norwegian sheep farming, the reality is very different. Isn't it time that sheep farmers look at their real problem, and stop hiding what is really going on in their industry? At the same time, it is time for nature management authoroties in Norway to start mange their wildlife population based on biology and ecology and not purely out of a sheep farming industry false perspective. Large predators are not the reason why sheep farming in Norway is decreasing!



-EG-