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ELK

Sweden’s famous white elk ‘not seen since January’

A rare white elk which won global fame last year has mysteriously vanished from its stomping ground in Värmland, western Sweden, with no sightings by locals since January.

Sweden's famous white elk 'not seen since January'
A white elk photographed in Värmland in July. Photo: Tommy Pedersen/TT
“People here in Värmland have rung me and said they haven’t seen him since the winter,” Ulf Jonasson, whose documentary about the elk was released last year, told The Local. 
 
“I’ve now been here a few days, looking around his favourite places, and I’m a little bit worried that maybe something has happened to him.” 
 
Johansson’s documentary, ‘The White King of the Forest’, has been watched by 750,000 people since it was aired on Sweden's state broadcaster SVT this June. 
 
The elk achieved viral fame when Hans Nilsson, a city councillor from Eda, one of the villages frequented by the elk, filmed it last August and uploaded his film on Facebook. 
 
The clip was picked up by BBC and MSN and shared thousands of times on social media. 
 

 

But long before Nilsson's clip, Jonasson had been tracking and following the stately animal for a long-term nature documentary, the success of which he put down to Ferdinand’s size and attractive personality. 
 
“I called him Ferdinand, because he’s like the bull Ferdinand in the Disney film: he’s very gentle and calm, and not so frightened, and he’s big, he’s majestic, so he’s really king of the forest up here. There’s no animal in the world quite like this.” 
 
 
Jonasson said it was not unusual for him not to be able to find Ferdinand immediately.  
 
“Sometimes I could follow him for several days, without a problem, but then it could go weeks or sometimes a month before I found him again.” 
 
But whenever he had not been able to find Ferdinand in the past, he said, he had always heard from others who had recently spotted him, so he finds his current absence worrying. 
 
“There are a number of villages up here, and there people pretty see him pretty regularly, and they haven’t seen him since January, he said.  “I followed him for four years, and so I have an emotional connection, naturally.”
 

Jonasson speculated that Ferdinand could have been killed by wolves, who hunt elk in packs, or else fallen through this year’s unusually soft ice and drowned in a lake. 
 
“But I hope he hasn’t hurt himself and that he will pop up somewhere again,” he said. 
 
Jonasson intends to keep searching for a few more days before returning north to his home in Jämtland.

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ELK

‘Stop taking selfies with elk,’ police warn Stockholmers

Stockholm police have asked the public to stop taking photos with elk, after several of the wild animals had to be killed after getting agitated by selfie-takers.

'Stop taking selfies with elk,' police warn Stockholmers
Whether in nature or in the city, if you do see an elk in Sweden, always keep a distance. Photo: Lola Akinmade Åkerström/imagebank.sweden.se

Police needed to shoot the elk after they wandered into residential areas including Nacka and Enskede in the capital, Mitt i Stockholm reports.

“An elk that has got lost can usually find its way back if it is calm. But when people run up and take pictures, it becomes stressed and aggressive. It is utterly misanthropic and it’s outrageous that people do not understand better,” police officer Kenneth Kronberg, responsible for the National Game Accident Council (NVR), told the newspaper. 

“Game wardens have agreed that there is nothing wrong with the elk in the city. However, they get very stressed because there are so many people trying to take pictures. That’s why we have to kill the elk, because of 08-ers [a pejorative term for Stockholmers] who think the animal world looks like a Walt Disney movie.”

As well as avoiding taking photos with the animals, police also urged the public to avoid attempting to pet or stroke them, or getting too close. If you see a wild elk, instead you should keep a safe distance away.

In 2017, a rare while elk drew crowds of visitors hoping to catch a glimpse after a video went viral, and again police had to warn the public to treat the animal with care and avoid approaching it. The elk then grew aggressive, charging at a dog-walker, which led police to say they would need to kill the elk if they could not chase it away from the residential area.

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