What’s The Matter With Mink? Lots, If You Live By A Stream And Keep Koi

By Dottie Evans

Like raccoons and fox, mink often forage for food by exploring the margins of rivers, streams and ponds. Unlike raccoons, they are usually quicker as they go about it, and they seem more matter of fact than the fox. They don’t stalk their prey, they just seem to rendezvous with it. There’s something magical about a mink.

––Nature Writer Bob Arnebeck

 

Magical? Yes, in the way any animal that is highly evolved to survive in a specific environment is both magical and mysterious. As the smallest members of the weasel family, mink are many things including cute, furry, and frenetic.

But they have their dark side, as several Newtown residents have recently observed.

Mink are extremely efficient killers that will prey upon most anything including rats, mice, fish, rabbit, birds, eggs, insects, or muskrat. They travel up and down a stream system for six or seven miles, covering the territory in a regular and secretive manner –– usually at night.

They are active 12 months of the year including the coldest, darkest nights of January. They do not hibernate and they are not subject to predation, which means their numbers fluctuate according to food supply. This is a concern for anyone living alongside a stream who keeps koi and goldfish in a pond, or who stocks the stream’s pools with trout.

“For mink, it’s like a fast food restaurant here,” says Jim Walsh, owner of The Mulch Place off Toddy Hill Road.

Mr Walsh’s seven-acre property abuts Curtis Pond and a stream flows through it into the Pootatuck River. He maintains a wide buffer zone on both sides to protect the stream from runoff that might originate from his mulch piles.

“The stream flows clean and cold and it’s always running. We’ve put koi in there for the kids to fish and I feed the fish with floating pellet food so they’ll stay around and not wander downstream. We’ve got rainbow trout in here, brown trout, catfish, bass, sunfish, small and largemouth bass,” Mr Walsh said during an interview in mid-May.

This past winter, Mr Walsh saw footprints in the snow along the stream and consulted with Jack Stokes, supervisor of the Pohtatuck Fish and Game Club. That was when he learned that the mink had lately become a local nuisance.

“We had 100 koi in there the first year, and we do expect to lose some over the winter,” Mr Walsh said but noted the mink seemed to be killing the koi for pure sport.

“They leave the kill along the bank and then the raccoons come along and finish them off. We’ve found fish carcasses torn apart and floating.”

Mr Walsh, who has lived in Newtown since 1970 and bought his business 13 years ago, also commented, “It’s a different world now with the increased population.”

The town’s growth puts pressure on local wildlife that had been accustomed to hunt and live within territories now bordered by homes and fragmented by roads and highways. Nature seems out of balance, he said. He understands the cause, but he doesn’t have to like it –– especially when he sees what the mink are doing on his property.

“I’ve seen mink swimming in my pond. They look like little sharks –– just a moving shape under the water with only a bit of curved spine exposed on the surface and moving very fast. With our volume of fish, it’s a free lunch out there,” Mr Walsh said.

 

Mink Thriving Along The Pootatuck

Mike Osborne is president of the Pohtatuck Fish and Game Club, which manages 300 acres along the Pootatuck River. The club does some stocking of fish and, along with the Candlewood Valley Chapter of Trout Unlimited, its members work to preserve the waterway for the benefit of naturally reproducing rainbow, brook, and brown trout.

“We have been doing river management for a long time, and I know there are a lot of predators like coyotes and otters that do not have any natural enemies anymore. As long as there’s that imbalance, you’ve got a potential problem,” Mr Osborne said.

“Mink are quick and small, and the koi fish and baby trout are easy targets.”

A blue heron comes, but he eats only what he needs to eat. An osprey might take one fish a day to feed his young. But a mink will kill a dozen fish and haul them onshore, lining them up as though to look at them and then walk away.

“What you have to do is be aware. Know the signs. Work with the Department of Environmental Protection and learn from them. There is a legal trapping season and it can be done very carefully if a state permit has been obtained. If illegal trapping is carried on, there is a $10,000 fine,” Mr Osborne said.

“A stream bank is where they feel the safest and that’s their escape route,” he added.

James Belden of Trout Unlimited agreed that mink can have a significant impact on a local trout population but he was not convinced that there had been a significant rise in their numbers.

“They are excellent predators but I am not sure if local populations are beyond normal…the entire Pootatuck…has a strong population. We also have several beaver which also have an impact, but again I’m not sure if they are beyond normal levels,” Mr Belden said.

Stream-Fed Ponds Are Mink Magnets

Adventure novelist Justin Scott and his wife, Amber Edwards, are longtime Newtown residents who live along a running stream. They have a small pond fed by the stream that is dammed at one end, and they enjoy watching wildlife that is attracted to the pond.

But in January 2005 the view was not so pleasant as they looked out their living room window and spied a mink slipping into their pond.

“It was underneath the surface for what seemed like a long time, and then we saw the mink emerge with a frog in its mouth. Either that frog was fast asleep and or it was dead. Quite horrible to think about actually,” Mr Scott recalled.

“In fairness, we have to remember we’ve invaded the mink’s territory. It’s rather marvelous when you think about it. That the mink is out there during coldest wintertime, hunting. It was so quick and fast, we could see its speed,” Mr Scott said.

Mr Scott said he had been doing research for a novel and did a lot of reading about mink.

“I found out quite a bit. A mink that has been raised in captivity could be as far as ten generations from the wild. It might never have seen the water but it still knows exactly what to do. If it escapes it goes straight to a stream, swims across to the other bank, and looks for something to kill.”

Bee Publisher Scudder Smith also lives on property through which a stream continuously flows. He maintains a couple of ponds on the property that are not directly connected to the stream, but they are very close –– close enough for the mink to go fishing.

“I’ve lost all my koi from the two ponds, plus all the goldfish. It happened during the middle of the winter when the koi were in hibernation,” Mr Smith said, adding he actually watched a mink tunnel through the snow and under the ice to get to his ponds.

“Next time, I’m going to be standing there with a pitchfork,” he added.

Licensed trapping would be a more legitimate alternative said Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) wildlife biologist Paul Rego during a recent interview.

“When a local population grows into a nuisance, trapping and relocation are sometimes tried. The mink is not an animal that usually is in the forefront of the news,” he added.

There is only one species of mink in the state, Mr Rego said. Mink make their dens in tree roots along the rivers. Babies are born in April and May and the average litter will have four to six young.

“Mink are found in most every state except one or two in the southwestern region of the United States. Technically, we should not trap except during regular trapping season, which is late fall and winter. Also, you can’t take more than eight mink off one property,” Mr Rego noted.