Moose Strolls Through Oslo, Killed 'for animal welfare reasons'
'For animal welfare reasons, the moose has been euthanised.' ∽ Haral Svensen of the Oslo City Wildlife Board, 11 June 2026
As spring appears to take a break once again—the apple tree started blossoming earlier this week, yesterday, we had some light snow on the 800+ metre-high mountains—so do we. Hence today’s posting is of a weird nature, even if it falls into the segments we cover here regularly. Moreover, it may even be said to constitute a follow-up to the polar bear posting from two months ago:
You see, today we talk about … a moose that was running loose in a residential area of Oslo, Norway; that is, until the below-related events happened on 11 June 2026.
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
Moose Strayed into Oslo’s City Centre: Euthanised
The moose’s life ended in Frogner in Oslo.
By Solfrid Marie Skaret et al., NRK.no, 11 June 2026 [source; archived]
A moose that strayed into Oslo city centre on Thursday morning has been shot by the wildlife board [orig. Viltnemnda].
It was a little injured, very stressed, and it was hopeless to get it back to the forest without anything happening. Thus we decided to euthanise it.
Thus Jon Hagen of the wildlife board [near-time statements read differently, e.g., operational leader Harald Svensen stated (source; archived)
For animal welfare reasons, the moose has been euthanised by the Wildlife Board.
Earlier versions of the official™ version by NRK also included that quote, but the version current as of 12 June 2026 no longer does]
The moose had strayed into central Oslo on Thursday morning.
NRK only became aware of the moose when employees saw it right by NRK’s premises on Marienlyst; it had come down from Blindern [that’s some prize-worthy journo-dom™ right there].
Shortly afterwards, it was seen running along the tram track at Majorstuen subway station and in Bogstadveien [check out the video of the animal moments before it was shot linked in the piece].
The moose then turned its head and trotted towards the fjord.
After a journey through the city’s streets down to the area by the Filipstad quay, it ended up in Skarpsnoparken, right by the E18 [a major motorway].
Here the area was cordoned off, and the moose euthanised by the wildlife board:
‘It was the wildlife commission’s assessment’, says Halvard Svanes of the Oslo police.
The wildlife board will now take care of the job of transporting the dead animal out of the city, he says.
It is not clear how long the park will be closed off [huhum, may there be other moose lurking around?]
Heard the Sound of Hooves
Una Mørch-Thoresen (27) was on her way to work when she saw the moose running past the bus stop at Vigelandsparken:
It ran back and forth on the tram tracks, and it seemed a bit stressed.
She first heard the sound of hooves running on the asphalt, and therefore thought it was a horse:
Then I turned around and saw that it was a moose. I was very surprised.
The 27-year-old thinks it is sad that the moose had strayed into the city centre:
It had come quite far, poor thing. It is not a safe for the moose to be in the middle of Kirkeveien [yeah, because it might be shot, you know].
Shot from an Apartment Block
It was Jon Hagen of the wildlife board who euthanised the moose.
He says that they got into the 5th floor of a block on the opposite side of the railway, which runs right past the park where the moose was.
There he got a safe shooting angle, says Hagen.
It is not every year that moose wander into the city.
But in spring, when the calves are chased away from their mothers, it happens occasionally, says Hagen.
It was precisely a one-year-old calf that was shot by the wildlife board, Hagen added:
It very often ends this way.
Bottom Lines
What an Orwellian comment by the wildlife board’s Harald Svensen, eh?
For animal welfare reasons, the moose has been euthanised by the Wildlife Board.
This is also why I’m reporting this non-issue to you—for it’s both a clear reference to Orwell’s 1984 (remember: war is peace, slavery is freedom) and a particularly strange thing to scrub from the rah-porting™ by NRK.
Yet, we’ve seen other such things before, and it’s only a matter of time before these kinds of editorial standards™ are applied to other issues, too.
But a silly, perhaps off-the-cuff remark about a moose?
Of course, because once one starts, it’s hard to stop.
If there’s even the most irrelevant thing that casts you in a bit of a bad light, just gaslight the audience.
Beyond these seemingly meta matters, let’s note that this is what the authorities hold in store for the hoi polloi: don’t stray outside your perimeter, lest you will be faced with serious consequences—this is your 15-minute-city.
As regards the massive response by police, traffic control, and the wildlife board, it’s all part of the game.
I live on a farmstead, we do have a few livestock (all tagged, another one of these things, you see), and I understand clearly that animals aren’t all furry and cuddly and sweet, esp. moose don’t fall into these categories.
Moose running around, in distress, in an urban environment are a danger to themselves and to bystanders; here’s a bit from a living in Norway website:
The moose is one of Norway’s most famous animals, second possibly only to the troll. The moose population has increased dramatically since the 1970s, with an estimated 30,000-40,000 moose born each year.
Such high numbers make it very likely that you will encounter a moose in Norway, be it if you’re driving along a Norwegian road or hiking in a forest, or even if you’re minding your own business in your garden.
While moose are generally docile, solitary creatures, if they are stressed, startled or have babies with them, they can quickly become danger-moose (if you’ll pardon the pun).
Ahahahahahaah, what a funny joke (not).
Moose aren’t cuddly or the like, and encountering one in the inner city is a problem (same as with wolves, by the way):
Plus there’s the somewhat inconvenient, if not outright, refusal to actually do any kind of rah-portin™ by noting, for instance, how many times these things happened in the past, say, quarter-century.
March 2009: a moose was seen on commuter rail tracks and was killed (source)
Feb. 2011: at least 1-2 moose were shot in about the same part of Oslo (source)
Jan. 2016: reports indicate another such incident (source)
Jan. 2024: the last time before the above-related incident of media rah-porting™ of a moose in Oslo (source)
So there’s five such incidents (including the above-related one) in the past couple of decades. There’s even a quite astounding set of tables kept by Statistics Norway (‘wildlife killed except hunting’, Norwegian only), but it also includes roadkills etc.
Of course, exact counts may vary, there’s no central registry, and the above listing is a lot of things but not exhausting; in fact, it’s the result of two minutes of looking on my part.
One more thing no note:
The moose population has increased dramatically since the 1970s, with an estimated 30,000-40,000 moose born each year.
In case you’re wondering what happened in the 1970s, here are three major changes:
Changes in forest management (clearing of larger swathes result in greater areas of young trees, which is the preferred diet of moose); context and background here.
Numbers increased from just over 5,000 animals in 1950 to almost 40,000 animals in 2000. The reasons for the dramatic growth in the moose population are complex. Low populations of predators, the introduction of different forestry practices [see above], and targeted shooting are considered the most important reasons. Nothing grows forever, and at the population peak in 2000, signs of lower fitness, poor pastures, and high natural mortality were seen for the moose in southern Norway and Trøndelag.
The decline in the moose population in southern Norway in recent years has been desired by the administration. Population numbers from early 2000 were far beyond carrying capacity, and they would not have been sustainable over time. Although the population has decreased, we still see signs that the moose population is beyond its carrying capacity. Low slaughter weights and poor grazing in southern Norway testify that there are still more moose in several places than there is reason to have. In some areas, established populations of wolves and bears have contributed to population declines in moose. This is only a small part of the reason for the population decline nationally, as there is no permanent presence of wolves or bears in the areas where the population decline has been greatest, such as in Agder [source]
I noted somewhere above that this incident tells us more about population management for people than you might wish to acknowledge, and the piece from which the above long quote was taken is instructive in another way, for it concludes thus:
In large parts of Norway, the sex balance has been or is still skewed, with a predominance of adult cows and a low average age of the bulls. This is unfortunate if you want a healthy stock of animals in good condition. To counteract this, culling should be directed to a greater extent towards calves, as culling of young animals often results in a skewed sex balance. Adult bulls should not be shot more often than adult cows.
What, then, dear reader, would you guess will happen if you substitute ‘humans’ for ‘moose’?
Now, that’s an inconvenient thought this Pride™ month, eh?
Typical incompetence and laziness, rather. Two years ago, the village my mother lives in had a moose that apparently had gotten the idea that living in the village was comfy - lot's of food and no real predators.
Since it does pose a danger if stressed which can happen easily enough, the hunters of that village used dogs to harass it while herding it out into the forest.
In an Oslo park you could just as easily have used a dozen hunters with dogs to either herd it out of town (using police to shut down traffic as needed) or to corral it for sedation via dart-gun.
But:
Then the hunter who shot it and his cronies wouldn't have gotten their chunks of free moose meat, which is the probable real reason for this.
Not that I'm throwing stones. We've got that kind of "hunter" here too, sadly.
Semi-related: if it is that easy to shoot something because it might pose a danger, well then it ought to be trivial to solve the issue of very dangerous criminals, yes?
I can see the same Orwellian logic applied to recalcitrant denizens of 15 minute cities. For moose population control I recommend mRNA slurry with affinities to sexual organs! It is a mature technology.