Photo from local Kirsten Foss Hansen
"It is surely entertaining to have an albino moose wandering in the woods but in purely breeding terms it is not right to let it live," Morten Brommdal, manager of the animal section at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Oslo told Moss Avis.
It didn't take long before also the international press started writing about the story. The German magazine Spiegel as well as Spanish and British newspapers picked up on the story.
Jon Arnemo, professor at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science (NVH), agreed that the albino moose was a rarity, though not a sensation. These animals are rarely very old. Their lack of pigmentation makes them more exposed to predators like wolves and they often have inferior sight or hearing.
So what happened actually with the albino moose ? Well, there were no official ban on shooting it during the annual hunting-season, and several hunters reported to have the moose in sight, but everyone seemed to follow their heart and let him go.... so out of the 450,000 strong moose-population in Scandinavia we probably still have a white-furred moose walking around in our woods.
