Atlas der Säugetiere Nordrhein-Westfalens

Mink (Amerikanischer Nerz)

28 entries

American mink

Rote Liste NRW: D Daten unzureichend

  entry

Neovison vison

The American Mink originally was only native to North America. During the 20th century however, escaped minks from fur farms began to spread in Europe. Nowadays large parts of the Baltic Sea region and of northern central Europe have been settled. American Minks are a great threat to the less competitive European Mink (Mustela lutreola). Just like the native mink the American Mink inhabits swampy and water-dominated habitats. In this he is not as strongly tied to water as the Otter Lutra lutra. The American Mink feeds on smaller water animals like fishes, amphibians, and small mammals or also eggs and juvenile birds which he preys upon in shallow water, on the banks, or on land.

In North Rhine-Westphalia there are so far no permanent Mink populations. However there are a number of individual records. Most recently, in June 2012, an off-coloured breeding-stock mink was found in the Heubach lowlands. This finding of an animal escaped from a breeding farm is one of the few recent and reliable records of the species in Westphalia, because during observation of wild-coloured animals a confusion with very dark Polecats often cannot be excluded. Other recent single records for example are from Büren or from the Borken Mountains near Haltern, where a mother with four young was found. What is striking is that the American Mink has not been verified from hunting records or in ecological studies of water-dependent mammal species like the otter.

Author

Jan Ole Kriegs und Henning Vierhaus

Citation

Kriegs JO, Vierhaus H (2025): Mink_(Amerikanischer_Nerz) (Neovison_vison).In: AG Säugetierkunde NRW — Online-Atlas of the mammals of North Rhine-Westphalia. Downloaded from saeugeratlas-nrw.lwl.org on 2025/04/01