Pushed to the brink by invasive American mink and habitat loss, a reintroduced wild population is finally thriving on Hiiumaa island
It finally stops snowing just as Tiit Maran parks his orange Dacia Duster next to a bridge on a quiet country road. “Too bad the snow is so fresh,” he says. “We’ll not find any tracks now.” Maran, the director of Tallinn zoo and a European mink biologist, is looking for the critically endangered mammal on an Estonian island.
Along a straight, ice-free stream, he clambers over fallen trunks, his boots sinking into the powder snow. A glorified chicken coop comes into view, one of the three sites where Maran’s team regularly released European minks between 2000 and 2016. Pregnant females were placed in the cages in May, allowing the mink and her brood plenty of time to adapt to the smells and the sounds of the forest before the doors swung open in August.