Canadian baby seal hunt - they're back at it.

[Alan Sondheim]

The original article is accompanied by photographs. This is about as
barbarous as it gets. - Alan


\----------------------------------------------------------/


New Demand Drives Canada’s Baby Seal Hunt

April 5, 2004
 By CLIFFORD KRAUSS





CAP-AUX-MEULES, Quebec, March 30 - Commercial hunting of
baby seals is back and even bigger than when it stirred a
global outcry two decades ago.

Horrified by the clubbing of infant harp seals, animal
rights advocates swayed public opinion against the hunt.
Environmentalists joined the campaign, fearing that the
species was being depleted. World sales collapsed. Even
Canada reacted with revulsion and began stiffening
regulations on the kill.

Now, Canada has lifted the quota to a rate unheard of in a
half century, buoyed by new markets in Russia and Poland,
and changing environmental calculations. A recovering
market has turned into a quiet boom.

Here on ice patches of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the hunt
looks nearly as brutal as ever. For as far as the eye can
see, dozens of burly men bearing clubs roam the ice in
snowmobiles and spiked boots in search of silvery young
harp seals. With one or two blows to the head, they crush
the skulls, sometimes leaving the young animals in
convulsions. The men drag the bodies to waiting fishing
vessels or skin them on the spot, leaving a crisscross of
bloody trails on the slowly melting ice.

On the trawler Manon Yvon, one hunter, Jocelyn Theriault,
35, said, "My father hunted for 45 years, so I was born
with the seal." His colleagues utter a sarcastic "welcome
aboard" as they throw the skins on their 65-foot boat. "We
do it for the money," Mr. Theriault said, "but it's also a
tradition in our blood."

Animal rights advocates aroused the world in the 1970's and
1980's with grim films of Canadian seal hunters clubbing
white-coated seal pups not yet weaned from their mother's
milk and then skinning some alive. That campaign - complete
with photographs of Brigitte Bardot snuggling an infant
seal - succeeded in shutting down American and European
markets and forcing a virtual collapse of the hunt.

But over the last six years, Canada's seal hunt, by far the
world's largest and commercially most valuable, has
undergone a gradual revival that has virtually escaped
world attention. That trend is making an extraordinary jump
this year, when the federal government will allow the
killing of up to 350,000 baby harp seals, or more than one
in three of all those born, largely for their valuable fur.


That is an increase of more than 100,000 from recent years,
and the largest number hunted in at least a half century.

Rising prices for the skins and contentions that the
growing seal population is contributing to a shrinking
codfish population have eased the revival of an industry
once roundly seen as barbaric. Meanwhile, tougher hunting
rules, including stiffer regulations to avert skinning the
seals alive, have muted the effort to stop the hunt and
eased the consciences of Canadians.

"This slaughter that everyone thinks has disappeared is
back with a vengeance," said Rebecca Aldworth, an antihunt
advocate with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

A majority of the seals killed are under a month old, she
said, and, "at that age, the seals haven't eaten their
first solid foods and have not learned to swim so they have
no escape from the hunters."

The seal hunt never completely shut down. After the United
States banned the importation of all seal products in 1972
and the European Union banned the importation of the white
pelts of the youngest pups in 1983, killings fell to as low
as 15,000 harp seals in 1985, mostly for meat and local
handicrafts.

Embarrassed by all the publicity accusing Canada of
inhumane treatment of animals, the government banned
killing whitecoats - the youngest pups up to 12 days old.
Now only the seals who have shed their white coats and
become "beaters," at about three weeks old, are killed in
these waters for their black-spotted silvery fur. The
killing of those young seals has so far raised fewer
hackles, although critics say hunting methods have not been
substantially changed.

The surprising rebound of the hunt off the Îles de la
Madeleine and the northern coast of Newfoundland, where the
harp seals migrate south from the Arctic every spring to
give birth and then mate again, results in large part from
a robust revival in the price of sealskin.

Seal products remain banned in the United States, and they
find only limited acceptance in most of Western Europe. But
new markets have emerged in Russia, Ukraine and Poland,
with a fashion trend for sealskin hats and accessories. Fur
experts expect the Chinese market to grow, perhaps raising
prices higher.

"Markets are good, acceptance is growing and prices are
well up," said Tina Fagen, executive director of the
Canadian Sealers Association. She said the price for a
top-grade harp sealskin had more than doubled since 2001,
to about $42, approaching the prices of the early 1970's.

But the revival is also made possible by a Canadian seal
population that was replenished during the long hunting
slump. The Canadian harp seal population has tripled in
size since 1970, according to the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans, to more than five million today.

Fishermen contend that the abundance of seals is hindering
a revival of shrinking cod stocks since each adult seal
eats an estimated ton of sea life annually. The fishermen
get support from politicians who want to help revive
economically depressed regions of Canada, and some
scientists say their position is reasonable.

Animal rights advocates are revving up a campaign against
the hunt, reviving calls for a tourism boycott of Canada
and flying journalists over the ice fields to photograph
hunters killing the seals. The New York Times did not take
part in any of those flights.

A new generation of celebrities has taken up the cause,
including Paris Hilton, Christina Applegate and Nick Carter
of the Backstreet Boys pop group. At the last Sundance Film
Festival, some people wore a new T-shirt that said, "Club
sandwiches, not seals."

But so far the outrage has not echoed the way it once did,
in part because Canada outlawed the killing of the youngest
pups to follow Western European import guidelines and
stiffened rules and enforcement to ensure that seals are
killed quickly and not skinned alive. The government
requires novice seal hunters to obtain an assistant's
license and train under the supervision of veterans for two
years before qualifying for a professional license.

The government this year added a requirement that hunters
thoroughly examine the skull of the seal or touch the eyes
of animal to test for reflexes to guarantee a seal is brain
dead before skinning.

"The industry needed to be cleaned up and it was, though
perceptions persist," said Roger Simon, the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans area director for the Îles de la
Madeleine.

Some prominent environmental groups that opposed the hunt
in years past because of concerns over the sustainability
of the Canadian harp seal population have dropped their
active opposition. Greenpeace, once one of the most active
groups against the hunt, now says it is satisfied that
Canada is not allowing infant whitecoat seals to be killed.


But Mads Christensen, a Greenpeace seals expert, said he
was concerned about this year's large hunt. "We don't have
enough science, and that calls for caution," he added.

Canadian officials say they will regularly review the seal
population and adjust the hunt accordingly. "If you are
going to have an annual harvest you have to maintain a
sustainable number," said Geoff Regan, the minister of
fisheries and oceans, in an interview. "We are going to
come up with these numbers on the basis of what the herd
can sustain."

Seal hunting is worth about $30 million annually to the
Newfoundland economy, which has been hurt by the collapse
of the cod fishery. About 5,000 hunters and 350 workers who
process skins rely on the industry. Hundreds more hunting
jobs are created in Quebec and Nova Scotia.

"I love it that the market is back," said Jason Spence, the
32-year-old captain of Ryan's Pride, a fishing boat that
set sail from Newfoundland a few weeks ago for the seal
hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Arguing that hunting seals is no worse than "people taking
the heads off chickens, butchering cows and butchering
pigs," he added, "People are just trying to make a living."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/international/americas/05SEAL.html?ex=1082139338&ei=1&en=f50f70fec4694f4c


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