More than 100 reindeer have been fatally mowed down by freight trains in northern Norway in the past week in a pre-Christmas “bloodbath,” according to reports.
One train killed 65 deer on the tracks on Saturday and another 41 died in the same gruesome fashion between Wednesday and Friday of last week during the animals’ winter migration.
“I’m so angry that I’m dizzy,” Ole Henrik, the owner of the 65 dead reindeer, told NRK, a Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company.
“It’s a senseless animal tragedy … a psychological nightmare.” Henrik said.
The reindeer deaths have come as the animals – led by their herders – migrate to the winter pastures during a hazardous trek.
In some cases, migrating reindeer even drown in Norway, which is home to around 250,000 semi-domestic reindeer.
Photos of the Saturday’s horrific train incident show the bloodied reindeer lying in the snow nearby the train tracks.
“It was a nightmare to watch,” the photographer behind the images, Jon Erling Utsi, a documentary filmmaker, told NRK.
“The worst thing was the animals that were not killed in the accident, they were lying there, suffering, it was a bloodbath over several kilometers,” Utsi said.
Between 2013 and 2016, more than 2,000 reindeer were killed along the same northern railway line.
With Post Wires