Beauty Without Cruelty - Defending Animal Rights

Despite decades of publicity and worldwide outrage against the killing of seals, massive yearly kills continue in Canada of the Harp and Hooded seals and in Namibia of the Cape fur seal, with Iceland also allowing unregulated hunting of grey seal pups.

CANADA

On March 12, 2009 Canada announced plans to kill 255 000 Harp Seal pups this Northern Hemisphere spring. The seal slaughter commenced on March 23rd.

The Canadian harp seal faces mass extinction from this man-made slaughter, while at the same time battling the results of global warming (also man-made) that has seen a drastic reduction in ice floes, which are their breeding grounds

In addition to being a cruel, unnecessary slaughter, the harp seal hunt is one of the most glaring displays of Canadian mismanagement of the oceans. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has regulated the cod fishery into oblivion and is working hard to wipe out the seals now, in this cruel, wasteful massacre they call the 'seal hunt'. In 2008, the sealers managed to kill over 215,000 seal pups after at least a quarter million drowned because of the historically poor formation of sea ice. Weather and these drownings prevented them from killing the rest of the 270,000 seal quota.

Once again, the sealers, mostly off-season fishermen from Newfoundland and Quebec, have cast shame on Canada as they smashed in the heads of hundreds of thousands more baby animals last year. They are supported by the Canadian government (and therefore the Canadian tax payer), who supplies spotter aircraft and ice-cutter ships to make their job even easier.

Keep in mind, 2007’s quota of 270,000 seals was IN ADDITION to the ecological disaster that took the lives of as many as a quarter million seal pups too young to swim. The massive drownings are the result of the abysmal ice conditions in the Gulf of St. Lawrence - the worst conditions in recorded history.

However, the efforts of activists around the world, and in particular the Canadian Senator Marc Harb who has brought a bill to end this senseless slaughter, may soon see the last of seal blood flowing on the ice. Together with the European Union, who has banned the import of any fur seal products, and the worldwide campaign to stop buying Canadian fish, the economic and moral screws are turning on the Canadian government.

Visit www.seashepherd.org; www.ifaw.org; www.hsus.org for more information and how to help end this terrible killing.

NAMIBIA

The annual slaughter of 80 000 Cape fur seal pups and 6 000 bulls will commence on July 1^st, 2009 and continue until November 15^th.

This slaughter is conducted by three concessionaires, who employ about 180 unskilled labourers to conduct their killing on the same beaches where tourists will be brought in the afternoon to watch what remains of the seal colonies swimming nearby. The beaches are cleaned of blood and the carcasses removed by tractors after the morning’s slaughter.

The baby seals are rounded up on Namibia's beaches with their nursing cows and clubbed to death, often as they are still feeding off their mothers’ milk.

Although the Cape fur seals, the only species of seal found breeding on the whole African continent, was classified by the United Nations - Convention In Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) as an endangered species under its Appendix II listing since 1977, Namibia continues to institute an annual 50% population commercial reduction or cull of its new-born pups and adult bulls via the inhumane and internationally illegal practice of clubbing baby seals in their nursery habitats.

Cape fur seals have been virtually driven off their natural habitats where they bred and lived, the offshore rocky islands, and forced to survive on the mainland, where they make easy prey for the killers.

As far back as 1971, the US banned imports of seal products from South Africa and Namibia, as under the US Marine Mammal Protection Act regulations it is a crime to club or kill seal pups still nursing or suckling in their breeding habitats. During a Commission on Sealing enquiry held in 1990 in South Africa, 11 top marine scientists recommended that the Cape fur seals be managed by both countries (Namibia and South Africa) as one population under one management policy, which led to South Africa ending its commercial seal culling policy in 1990.

In 2007, group CEO Stephen Lussier of De Beers Diamonds (the largest contributor to Namibia's GDP) wrote to Seal Alert-SA stating, "De Beers does not support any seal culling activities and like you, I cannot help but be moved by the images you have seen". Shortly thereafter, Germany became the third country to ban imports of specifically Cape fur seal products, of the four largest international tourism countries to Namibia, followed shortly afterwards by the Netherlands.

In response, Namibia's Fishery Minister Abraham Iyambo replied, "If culling seals is a problem, the solution is to eat them".

Should a single Fisheries Minister be allowed to cause the extinction of the only species of seal found breeding on the African continent?

A far simpler and intelligent solution, (if the stench of rotting seal carcasses on these forced mainland colonies is the motive behind Namibian mass-cull) would be for the fisheries Minister to allow seals to return to their former banned island colonies, and allow these seals, which have so effectively done so in the past, to control, their own population and numbers. With the added benefit of Seal Island eco-tourism boat-trips, and the sustainable revenue it would bring.

Write to: His Excellency Mr. Philemon Kambala at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it asking for an end to this brutal, unsustainable slaughter. PLEASE keep you correspondence polite at all times.