To catch a predator: Regimes of killing the mink in Sweden

This paper examines regimes of killing the American mink (Neovison vison) in Sweden, a species introduced through fur farming and now targeted as invasive due to its ecological impacts. While policy frames mink control as a necessary conservation intervention, eradication remains unlikely; I conceptualize and interrogate management attempts to cull mink as distinct regimes of killing that differ in temporality, scale, technology, and forms of human/animal encounter. In this way, the paper brings attention not to the justification of killability of an invasive species, as much contemporary biopolitical scholarship focuses on, but the hows and whos of the regimes of killing. Drawing on ethnographic material, I contrast solitary, routine trapping, often embedded in domestic and land-based stewardship, with organized culling hunts involving multiple participants, dogs, and coordinated technologies. These regimes appear to align with different hunting modalities including distributed, anticipatory forms versus immediate, collective confrontation. However, I show they also share underlying features, including reliance on landscape knowledge, the redistribution of responsibility, and the management of both presence and absence in the act of killing. I situate these practices within broader debates on animal welfare in invasive species management. Given the limited literature on mink specifically, I draw on EU guidance to show how welfare is unevenly distributed across methods: trapping concentrates risks around device performance, restraint, and delayed death, while hunting foregrounds pursuit, stress, and the possibility of wounding. Rather than treating methods as simply humane or inhumane, the paper highlights how different regimes produce distinct configurations of suffering, skill, and accountability. I argue that these killing practices not only manage animal populations but also enact particular human/animal relationships, revealing how care, control, and violence are differently organized across conservation contexts.