Between 2000 and 2016, Tiit Maran, director of Tallinn Zoo, has released European minks at three different locations, one of which is a glorified chicken coop. The cages were filled with pregnant females in May, giving the mink and her family plenty of time to adjust to the scents and sounds of the forest before the doors swung wide in August.

Hiiumaa is the second-largest island in Estonia. Its natural limits, which are surrounded by the Baltic Sea, scarce population, and small surface size (989 sq km) make it a good candidate for the restoration of the European mink, which has been locally extinct in Estonia since the mid-1990s.

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