Environmental Extremism

Environmentalism has reached a new, confused extreme. Recently an environmental council in Sweden’s Jaemtland province rejected an entrepreneur’s request for a permit to hunt the eggs of the mythological Storsjoe Monster, a local version of the Loch Ness Monster. According to legend, the creature lives in Lake Storsjoe and has the body of a serpent, the head of a cat and several winglike fins. The entrepreneur said that he wanted to raise baby monsters as a tourist attraction, but the local environmental council turned down his request. Although it’s unclear whether one or both parties were in on the humor, a subsequent investigation into the case turned up another curiosity. In 1986 the council denied a permit to a resort developer on the grounds that the proposed project would threaten the Storsjoe Monster, which had previously been declared endangered. The Parliamentary Ombudsmen’s office in Stockholm is now looking into the matter, no doubt hoping that the classification of a mythological creature as “endangered” was an elaborate joke.