Funding
Personal funds
Date
–
Partners
Danube Delta National Institute for Research and Development
Contact
Andreas Kranz
Target species
European mink (Mustela lutreola)
Target area
Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve
Countries
Romania
The European mink (Mustela lutreola) is the second most endangered land animal of Europe, following the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus). The EU Habitats Directive has named the European mink among one of the priority species for which the EU has a particular responsibility. Currently, it is only present in a few isolated populations (France, Spain, Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Romania), with a sharp decline in the number of all these populations, with the exception of Romania.
Our activities in the Danube Delta focussed on the detection of the local population of European mink and the identification of risk factors threatening the population. This included identifying the potential occurrence of the non-native American mink (Neovision vison), which after being introduced to Europe in the 1920s, poses a significant risk to the original European mink population.