Heating Plant BURNS BUNNIES To Warm Swedes

In one of the more bizarre animal stories in recent memory, The Local, an English Language news site in Sweden, reports on an animal control problem in Stockholm's parks. The parks are apparently overrun with rabbits -- some of which are abandoned pets that have, of course, multiplied like rabbits. The problem is so bad that last year over 6,000 rabbits were culled from parks. It's hard to describe how they get rid of the rabbits without it sounding creepy: animal control officers troll the parks early in the morning, just as the rabbits are peaking their heads out of their little rabbit holes, and shoot them dead with rifles.

Now the story gets stranger: instead of disposing of the rabbit bodies, authorities have been freezing them and shipping them to a heating facility in central Sweden where they are burned to produce energy.

The Local reports:

"Those who support the culling of rabbits surely think it's good to use the bodies for a good cause. But it feels like they're trying to turn the animals into an industry rather than look at the main problem," Anna Johannesson of Vilda kaniners värn ('Society for the Protection of Wild Rabbits') told the local Vårt Kungsholmen newspaper.

HuffPost Green is undecided on if it's better that the rabbit bodies are not wasted or if the whole thing is beyond sinister. What do you think?


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Comments

[Ipanemagirl]

could they not be sld as meat to eat as well? Nature should not be wasted.

[lyredragon]

Oh yeah, that would be a good Idea, except fr that heaping helping of tuleremia that they carry. By the way you can thank the Western Hemisphere for that particular disease. My question is why they aren't skinning them and selling the hides for extra bucks while they send the rest of the corses off as cordwood

[HillBillyRealist]

I love it - best response I have heard in decades

[SteveDenver]

In the U.S., can we just freeze everyone who died from lack of insurance to heat the offices of insurance companies?

[iamnodem]

Dem. are next for the bur/ners. Go/d the worl/d will sti/nk from the smell then.

[LMPE]

How about doing this to everyone at Clusterfox? Now there's any energy source that we never needed!

[SneathLane]

Rabbits were imported into Australia by ignorant sportsmen and, lacking natural predators, soon ran rampant and destroyed native animal habitats as well as human crops - exactly what happened in Sweden.

An enterprising Australian in the late 1800s, seeing all this free game running about, opened a rabbit canning factory in Colac, Victoria.

Millions of jars of preserved rabbit were sent back to Britain, where the rabbits had come from, and native animal habitats around Colac benefited from the reduction of the rabbit population.

This might be a better solution, since the animal lovers here object so strongly to burning them. Or do they want to leave them be, so that they can continue destroying the habitats of the native Swedish wildlife? You can't protect your native small animals when rabbits are running rampant - rabbits are too destructive.

[Tommygun264]

At least they are shooting them first. The headline had me picturing live bunnies being shoveled into furnaces like they do with all those stray cats at the Hello Kitty factory.

[Chip W]

The common theme in these comments is that rabbits don't matter. They're just things that have gotten in our way, and we have the unquestioned right to do whatever we want to deal with our problem.
We're very special.

[Principaldad]

So I take it you allow bugs the run of your house. Or, if you see a cockroach you scoop it up and put it outside? What about mice and other pests (which can spread disease)? At what point does it become wrong?

It isn't that rabbits don't matter, but occasionally a problem gets to the point that it must be dealt with.

[Chip W]

I don't disagree.
I object to the attitude that we're number 1, we're special, we're more important than all the other animals. It's self-importance on a species level. The world would be a better place if we didn't think we're more important than everyone else.
I like the attitude that I'm a little piece of life. So is a rabbit, and a cockroach. I like the view of the world that gives me.
But yes, I'll kill a cockroach or a silverfish.

[gifu]

The negative effects of over-population are happening right before your eyes. Your sense of sentimentality just becomes insanity at some point in the game.

[BlackBuddha]

I want my bunny back, bunny back, bunny back...
Sweeeden's­...
Buuuuun-nies Been'n Killed....
Barrrr Baaa Quuuu Sauce.

Repeat until bored.

[FrTown]

Can't they skin them first to make cheap faux fur?

[kittyarmy]

How would that be faux fur, though?

[FrTown]

faux refers to imitation fox, mink, beaver, stoat (ermine), otter, sable, seals, etc. even bear.
The rabbit fur is dyed to resemble the above mentioned wild, and often protected, animals

[larry278]

If the bunnies were skinned before being burned-it could add to the cost of bunnies as fuel. Skinning animals takes time & requires skill. PETA would not see this as a desirable thing either. PETA won't approve of burning bunnies, skinned or not skinned, as a tolerable thing.

[Ipanemagirl]

why would it be faux fur, if its real fur?

[Nyah Molineaux]

Not Bugs Bunny. I love bunnies. Who would want to kill such animals?

[ReedYoung]

I'm guessing you don't have a garden, or if you do, then you have no hoppy floppies running around wild in your neigborhood.

[azhura]

I love Bunnies too, but they can be a huge problem if left unchecked in population growth. They are also very tasty.

[Ipanemagirl]

Lapin a la moutarde! yummy!

[KJLSanDiego]

THUMPER! NOOO! SO SAD!

[MorgaineChya]

Australia has a big problem with the invasive an invasive frog species. The cane toad is very poisonous and is killing many of the native species of animals, especially snakes and other animals that eat toads.

They are killing them by the hundreds of thousands. An enterprising Australian devised a way to recycle the frog bodies: turning them into fertilizer.

It is very popular and a premium is paid for it. The first few batches prove to be volatile and would catch afire if stored improperly, but they have fixed that problem.

It's better than burning the bodies because Australia already has a problem with a large hole in the ozone layer mostly because they use coal for much of their energy. Burning coal, like burning frogs, releases a large amount of carbon into the air.

The article makes a good point though: it would be better to deal with the problem in a way that doesn't allow rabbits to continue to proliferate with the only answer being to kill them and burn them.

Besides, storing the carcasses and transporting them to the energy plant has to cost more than the bunies are worth as fuel, and those activities also increase carbon output.

[Principaldad]

Recycling frogs. Now THAT is GREEN.

[connorin]

You guys must HATE the movie "Open Season"

[BeFairNow]

You know, they might be on to something! The rate at which rabbits breed makes them a more easily renewable source of energy than oil and natural gas as well as most other biofuels.