Activists suspected in massive mink release only sentenced them to death

There's no ecosystem in one square mile that can support 40,000 minks," says University of Minnesota Extension' s Strauss. "They're going to decimate the food supply. There was no chance that was going to go well under any circumstances."

When suspected animal rights activists liberated some 40,000 mink from a Stearns County pelt farm earlier this week, they didn't grant the animals emancipation. They assigned them a death sentence.

The mink were housed at Lang Farms near Eden Valley, a swath of central Minnesota dominated by croplands about 75 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Handlers using fish nets have managed to recover less than 6,000, and 90 percent were dead.

As for the remaining 34,000 or so that remain on the lam, an equally brutal fate awaits.

Minks are carnivorous weasels. They eat just about any kind of creature that lives in and near water, including frogs, mice, and worms. The mink raised at Lang Farm had food provided to them, according to Andrea Strauss, wildlife, and conservation expert with University of Minnesota Extension. Now that they have to earn their keep. it's not going to be pretty.

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