The reindeer calf Líf, which was found abandoned by her mother near the smelter in Reydarfjördur, east Iceland, and then adopted by the farmers at Slétta, died on Tuesday. Líf last made the headlines in the middle of the campaign.
A reindeer herd in east Iceland. Photo by Páll Stefánsson.
“I’m a farmer and I have watched horses and other animals die but this wasn’t anything like that. It is an immense loss for me and I feel terrible,” Dagbjört Briem Gísladóttir, the reindeer calf’s caretaker, told mbl.is.
Gísladóttir explained that the reindeer calf had died from a muscular disease. “It hurts to watch Líf go; especially now when the grass is getting greener and the summer is around the corner. I had started to look forward to the summer with Líf.”
A few days before the elections on Saturday Minister of the Environment Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir visited Slétta to prevent the animal from being destroyed. The Environmental Agency had warned that keeping wild animals in captivity was illegal.
However, that had not enforced in Líf’s case because the calf would have died had the farmer’s on Slétta not taken her in. It seemed to thrive on the farm and never tried to return to the wild.
Click here to read more about Líf.
