Another spring, another year of blood on the ice

Published on Tuesday 25 March 2008 21:49

The waters of Canada's Gulf of St Lawrence are again about to turn red, but each year hopes grown of ending the annual cull of baby seals, says MARTYN McLAUGHLIN

THEY are normally the most picturesque of waters, grand estuaries fed by the Great Lakes of North America which flow past imposing cliffs and rustic landscapes, before spilling out into a frigid Atlantic.

But the waves around the Gulf of St Lawrence are beginning to stir ahead of an "annual harvest" some claim to be their sustainable birthright, but denounced by animal welfare campaigners, including Sir Paul McCartney and Brigitte Bardot, as little more than a ritual of unfettered barbarism.

Over the coming week, as the winter ice floes break up allowing fishing boats a safe passage, a historic seal cull in Canada will once more claim its yearly bounty. Some 275,000 harp seals will have their young lives cut short in the gulf and in an area of Newfoundland known as "The Front". Their deaths, sanctioned by the federal government, are cited as a crucial boon for the Canadian economy. Increasingly, however, critics of the practice are threatening the end of a tradition that has gone on for generations.

For those vehemently opposed to the cull, the currency of their argument is not words, but pictures, with images enduring of skinned, dismembered seal carcases lying atop the ice, victims of the hunters.

Campaigners are aghast at the manner of the seals' death, with the pups, most of which are under three months of age, clubbed, shot and skinned, sometimes while still alive. Yet their objections, they insist, are not based on emotional responses alone, with questions raised as to whether the cull is necessary to the region's economy.

Robbie Marsland, the UK director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who is in Canada with colleagues to monitor proceedings, believes the commercial hunt must not be confused with Inuit subsistence hunting, which involves local communities taking a small number of seals for their own use.

"No Canadians make a living from hunting seals," he said. "Sealers are fishermen by trade, who make a small additional income for a few weeks a year from killing seals. In fact, the majority of Canadians themselves are against the hunt, with 72 per cent supporting regulations to ban the hunting of seal pups."

So vast is the hunt's scale, Mr Marsland adds, it has become unfeasible to properly regulate.

"Every year we see many seals clubbed but not fatally wounded, before being skinned. Others are shot and injured before being either hooked and dragged aboard a boat or slipping beneath the surface of the water to suffer death from drowning."

Mankind, however, poses more than a direct threat to the seals, the regional population of whom is estimated at 5.5 million, almost three times their number in the 1970s. Global warming is increasingly exacting its own grim measures on the mammals, with warmer weather melting the ice on which the pups live, causing them to drown. Last year, tens of thousands were estimated to have suffered this fate, and several hunting crews were forced to abandon their vessels due to the condition of the ice.

If it is powerless to combat climate change, the Canadian government has at least started making positive noises about minimising the suffering of the seals, even if the quota of those animals to be killed has increased by 5,000 on 2007.

Under existing laws, seals less than 12 days old cannot be killed, and following three years of negotiations, it has for the first time taken on board recommendations made by the country's Independent Veterinarians Working Group to "ensure beyond any possible doubt that a seal is dead before it is skinned".

Sealers participating in this year's cull, who are required to hold a licence, must comply with the rules, and they will appear in marine mammal regulations in 2009.

The guidelines require hunters to check an animal's pupils for a blinking reflex, and to slit its main arteries under its flippers, after striking or shooting it.

Such measures, though, are unlikely to appease everyone, and may indeed be too little, too late. But perhaps the greatest threat to what has become the world's largest marine mammal hunt is Europe. There is speculation that the EU is about to put in place an import ban on seal products, with a group of MEPs calling for an immediate moratorium.

With European member states on the receiving end of around a third of Canadian seal products – predominantly Finland, Germany, Denmark and Greece – it would leave the nation with far fewer customers for the mammals' pelts, which are used for a range of goods, including some dress sporrans. The US has banned Canadian seal products since 1972, and already Belgium and Holland have introduced their own legislation prohibiting the sale of seal products. Similar laws are on the way in Italy, although a sizeable market continues in China and Russia, with similar culls popular in the latter nation.

Whatever future legislation comes into force, the Canadian Sealers Association (CSA) will continue to fight its corner. Representing about 5,000 Newfoundlanders who, like their forebears, cite their right to live on the land and seas which surround them, the organisation is adamant the cull affords them a vital financial boost.

The CSA claims the hunt is worth around 8 million annually, and provides up to a third of sealers' annual income, particularly in areas blighted by high unemployment.

One such promoter of the cull is Anne Troake. Descended from a famous Newfoundland sealing family, she claims the hunt is the linchpin of the area's "social system".

"The vast majority of my family members can account directly for what is on their dinner plate," she argues. "They or one of their neighbours probably hunted, fished or grew the ingredients. This has been going on for centuries with little impact on the environment. It is a model of sustainability.

"The continuation of the sealing industry can mean the difference between a thriving rural village and a ghost town. It can mean the difference between one's children going to university or the two main alternatives for Canadian working-class families – labour in the tar pits of Alberta or 'join up' to be cannon fodder for the war in Afghanistan."

Like the arguments which oppose it, Ms Troake's case is a powerful one, but her way of life will, for the moment, be allowed continue. Although how much longer the waters around north east Atlantic's ice floes turn red, remains a matter of fierce debate.

Fur flies over British attempts to extend product ban

UNDER existing laws, European bans on the sale of seal products apply only to those animals that are under 12 days old, known as "whitecoats".

However, the UK has recently exerted pressure on the EU to follow the likes of Belgium and the United States and reject all products made from the mammals.

Whitehall's stance has angered James Wright, the Canadian High Commissioner in London, who said "public morality concerns" must not be a priority. Nevertheless, MEPs from across the continent are becoming increasingly critical of Canada's cull.

While a band of European parliamentarians – including Labour's David Martin and the Green Party's Caroline Lucas – are demanding an outright ban, any decision will rest on the outcome of a study that has been ordered by Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, to determine if the hunts are humane.

A European Parliament declaration in September last year, which called for an EU-wide ban on seal products, was adopted by MEPs at the time, but the commission itself has yet to lend its support.

Ms Lucas has said the decision to undertake a study was a waste of time and money.

Despite widespread political support, there remain obstacles to a ban. The numbers of the animals run into the millions, and the World Wildlife Fund confirmed last month it does not consider the seals to be endangered