The Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced a harp seal hunt Thursday in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence , but there is some question whether a hunt will be possible.
The hunt will go ahead with a reduced quota. Ice conditions in the southern gulf are the worst in years, and there was some speculation the hunt would be cancelled.
"Ice conditions in the southern gulf is an issue, but I want to put it in some perspective. The area that we are concerned about is significant, but it is one small piece of the overall hunt," said Kevin Stringer, the director general of resource management with DFO.
Seal pups cannot swim in the first weeks of life without ice floes they drown. DFO has already said it is expecting high pup mortality this year.
With this in mind, DFO Thursday reduced the quota for the entire gulf to 270,000 seals from 325,000.
About three quarters of that hunt usually takes place in the northern gulf. DFO is allowing the hunt to proceed in the southern gulf but seal hunters, most of whom are based in the Magdalen Islands , would have to travel a long way to find a significant amount of ice to hunt on.
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Conditions are better in the northern gulf, off the coast of Newfoundland .
While pup mortality is expected to be high this year, DFO described the herd as healthy, and numbered it at about 5.5 million animals. It has, however, moved ahead a survey of the herd that was planned for 2009 to 2008.
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Updated at 1:30 PM
OTTAWA (CP) Canada s decision to allow a reduced seal hunt despite the deaths of many pups this year is being condemned by animal rights groups as a recipe for the eradication of the East Coast harp seal.
Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn announced Thursday that this years quota for the seal hunt is 270,000 animals a reduction from last years catch of 335,000 seals.
Fisheries officials said during a telephone briefing from Ottawa that hunters will be able to kill seals in all traditional hunting areas, including the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence , where thin and broken ice has led to the deaths of many newborns.
Fisheries Department spokesmen Kevin Stringer and Mike Hammill told reporters that pup mortality in the southern Gulf could be as high as 90 to 100 per cent this year.
Nevertheless, Stringer said the southern Gulf is open to hunters who want to look for seals amid the thin ice and already decimated population.
Its an appropriate number, Stringer said of this years quota. Its consistent with our precautionary approach.
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Fisheries officials insisted the harp seal herd is healthy and abundant at about 5.5 million animals.
However, the department is accelerating a population survey of the herd, which will be carried out next year instead of 2009.
This is an important resource for Canadians and we take the sustainable management of it very seriously, Stringer said.
The 2007 quota and management plan was greeted with howls of protest by animal rights groups who have made the annual East Coast seal hunt the focus of international condemnation.
Rebecca Aldworth of the Humane Society of the United States said in an interview that seals are being subjected to the same kind of political mismanagement that led to the collapse of the cod fishery.
Aldworth said Hearn, who is from Newfoundland and Labrador , has it in for harp seals.
She said Hearn and the Fisheries Department appear determined to eliminate the seal, a marine mammal despised by many Atlantic fishermen as a competitor for dwindling fish stocks.
I dont believe the harp seal population can withstand this kind of mismanagement much longer, Aldworth said. Sheryl Fink of the International Fund for Animal Welfare said shes shocked Ottawa is allowing a commercial hunt in the southern Gulf despite the fact that officials acknowledge the high pup mortality.
We could be looking at wiping out what is left of the Gulf herd this year, Fink said.
Newborn seal pups cant swim and need solid ice on which to survive.
Although Canadian hunters no longer kill the newborn whitecoats, the vast majority of seals killed in the hunt are between three and 12 weeks of age.
Fink said figures provided by the Canadian governments own scientists show that any catch limit set above 165,000 will see the harp seal population continue to decline.
With harp seals facing a growing threat from global warming and poor ice conditions, continuing the hunt at the unsustainable level announced today is nothing short of irresponsible, Fink said.
Stringer said the reduction of the quota by 65,000 animals is substantial.
The vast majority of the hunt this year, as in past years, will take place off the northeastern coast of Newfoundland in an area called the Front.
Seventy per cent of the quota will be taken on the Front. The remaining 30 per cent will come from the Gulf of St. Lawrence , mostly the northern Gulf where ice conditions are better than they are in the south. The one-year quota includes allocations of 2,000 seals for personal use and 4,860 seals for aboriginal initiatives.
Stringer said there will be no change this year in the rules for observers who want to watch and report on the hunt.
However, it is much more difficult to observe the hunt off Newfoundland because of the greater distances involved.
Traditionally, animal rights groups and news reporters observe the hunt in the southern Gulf, between Iles de la Madeleine and Cape Breton Island .
Stringer said the department has had fewer applications this year for observer permits, which are designed to keep observers and hunters at safe distances from each other.
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Poor ice scales back Canada seal hunt
The number of young harp seals that Canadian hunters can kill off the east coast this year will be cut by a quarter, mainly because of poor ice conditions where the animals give birth, officials say.
The federal fisheries ministry also promised stricter controls on hunters to stop them killing more than their quota. The seals are either shot or clubbed to death on ice floes in a hunt that animal rights protesters say is inhumane.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans set this year's seal quota at 270,000 animals, down from 335,000 in 2006. It estimates the east coast harp seal herd is around 5.5 million.
The hunt had been set to begin on March 28 but no start date has yet been announced. The first stage takes place on ice floes to the south of the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence .
Officials and animal rights activists said earlier this week there was very little ice to the south of the islands and that many more pups than usual had drowned. The seals use the ice floes to give birth to their young.
"There are poorer ice conditions than usual in the southern Gulf ... the area that we are concerned about is significant but it is one small piece of the overall hunt," said Kevin Stringer of the ministry.
"The decrease this year is very substantial ... we think it's an important move and is sustainable."
The hunt around the Magdalen Islands usually accounts for around 20 per cent of the overall catch. Most seals are killed off the coast Newfoundland , further to the north.
Stringer said hunters would still be allowed to kill seals south of the Magdalen Islands .
"It's appalling ... they're actually talking about allowing the hunt in the southern Gulf to proceed to wipe out the few remaining seal pups there," said Rebecca Aldworth of the Humane Society of the United States .
"I think it shows that the Canadian government has a clear agenda to exterminate seals and nothing is going to divert them from that course," she told Reuters.
Stringer said it was possible that around 90 per cent of the pups born in the southern Gulf this year could die but said if this were the case, it would not necessarily have a big impact on overall seal herd health.
"Seals pup for 15 or 20 years so what happens in one specific part of the hunt in one specific year needs to be considered in this broader perspective," he told reporters on a conference call.
Stringer said that to ensure seal numbers stayed healthy, hunters who caught more than their share would have their quota cut next year. The amount of time hunters can spend on the ice would be cut to allow inspectors to make sure quotas had not been exceeded, he added.
Ottawa also decided that the next proper survey of harp seal numbers would be carried out in 2008 and not in 2009 as originally planned.
"With harp seals facing a growing threat from global warming and poor ice conditions, continuing the hunt at the unsustainable level announced is nothing short of irresponsible," said Sheryl Fink of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
) 2007 Reuters
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Activists Protest Canadian Seal Hunt
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0307/409849.html
TORONTO - Thursday March 29, 2007 5:28 pm
Canada announced Thursday that hunters can kill 270,000 harp seals this spring, despite environmentalists' protests that thousands of pups too young to swim have fallen through ice thinned by global warming, jeopardizing the stability of the population. Animal-rights groups worldwide condemned the hunt as inhumane.
The traditional spring hunt is key to the livelihood of Canadian seal hunters and aboriginal peoples. To protect the seal population in Canada - which now stands at about 5.5 million - fisheries officials announced a sharp reduction in the number that can be killed, down from last year's quota of 335,000 animals.
"These decisions are guided by principles of conservation," Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Loyola Hearn said in a statement. "I also want to ensure that the people who depend on this resource for their livelihood will benefit from it over the long-term."
Hearn acknowledged the thin ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence , where animal rights groups have complained that pups unable to swim are dying by the thousands. He said only 20 percent of the hunt takes place in the Gulf and that ice conditions in the Northern Gulf and off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador remain good.
There was no announcement of the opening date of the hunt, which has been getting later each year due to the thinning ice and a lack of pups. The hunt opened on March 26 last year.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Humane Society of the United States , both of which have long led international campaigns to end the centuries-old hunt, immediately condemned the new hunting quota.
"With harp seals facing a growing threat from global warming and poor ice conditions, continuing the hunt at the unsustainable level announced today is nothing short of irresponsible," IFAW senior researcher Sheryl Fink said in a statement. "This decision has no basis in science or conservation."
Research indicates that killing more than 165,000 harp seals would make the population decline, the group said. Federal fisheries officials counter that the overall seal population has tripled since the 1970s. Environmentalists say it is shrinking in the southern part of the Gulf, which bodes ill for the region overall.
Rebecca Aldworth of the Humane Society, who is in Newfoundland preparing to observe the hunt when it begins, said flyovers of the region indicate that thousands of seal pups have drowned because of the poor ice, which conservationists blame on global warming.
"The entire seal population has been essentially swept out into the Atlantic ," she said in a telephone interview. "The ice has melted; it's literally just slush out there. We looked for those hundreds of thousands of pups and we found just three surviving."
Aldworth has been observing the hunt for nine years and has repeatedly clashed with fisheries officials and was banned from observation last year after allegedly interfering with the hunt.
Fisheries officials said Thursday they would issue observation permits this year, but only if they felt it was safe for helicopters to land on the ice.
Aldworth says she has witnessed seals being skinned alive and other "unimaginable cruelty."
The United States has banned Canadian seal products since 1972 and the European Union banned the white pelts of baby seals in 1983.
The European Commission said earlier this month that it would launch a study to see whether seal hunting in Canada is carried out humanely, though it has so far rejected calls for an EU-wide ban on the import of adult seal pelts and other products.
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Fisheries and Oceans Canada, http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca
Humane Society, http://www.humanesociety.org
International Fund for Animal Welfare, http://www.ifaw.org
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Thursday, March 29th, 2007
http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/?p=552
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 3/29/07 Animal lovers Emily Deschanel of Bones and Reggie Lee of Prison Break joined the Humane Society in a West Hollywood press conference designed to renew the fight against the annual commercial seal hunt in Canada, which have quietly become larger than ever. The hunts, once a celebrity cause in the 80s, now account for the clubbing deaths of more than 350,000 baby harp seals a year, whose pelts are used in the fashion industry.
Deschanel and Lee are two of the newest celebrities to take up the campaign to end the seal hunt. For as long as celebrities have been speaking out against this Canadian tradition it is any wonder that there are even any seals left to kill. But after so many years of protest the Canadian government still protects these hunters who often use clubs and other brutal killing techniques in order to take the furs of the seals. Rifles are also used, but activists say each bullet hole reduces the value of the pelt by $2, so hunters often let wounded seals bleed to death slowly.
According to the events organizers, 350,000 harp seals were killed for their fur in 2006 alone the largest slaughter witnessed in half a century. The event organizers added that this annual press conference is usually held on the ice with the seals in Canada , however there is not enough ice to stand on this year for the first time. Global warming?
Organizers claim that the melting ice also contributes to the death of thousands of infant seals, who are unable to survive in the water at such n early age. The hunters, however simply jump in their hunting boats.
As the 2007 hunt gets ready to begin, even larger numbers of animals are expected to be killed, and organizers hope it becomes once again a cause cilhbre.
Humane Society website: http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/protect_seals/