stop seal hunting in canada

Rickets said:
Just curious. Not condoning clubbing of anything here, but I was wondering:

Are these seals particularly endangered?

hadees said:
you sure they are alive? I would think getting the shit beat out of them with a club would kill them.

imustbestopped said:

It's illegal to skin the animal when it is alive.

Keith said:
925,109

Merry said:
If the seal hunt was ended completely it would devastate a lot of Inuit communities in the far North who have no other source of income.

I'm not saying bludgeoning baby seals is by any means acceptable, but this issue is more complex than many would lead you to believe.

Personally I think enforcement of existing laws is a better solution.

Merry said:

We have a Coast Guard as well as a Department of Fisheries and Oceans who are in charge of enforcing these kinds of laws, but they're grossly understaffed and underfunded. Some more money for them would be a good start.

And why aren't we talking about small villages? Aboriginal hunters and their communities are a huge part of this equation. The vast majority of people living in Canada's far north where the seal hunt takes place are Inuit, so I don't think it's fair to exclude them from this debate. They may be employed by heartless corporations who in turn pay taxes to the Territoral and Federal governments, but if the hunt is outlawed, it's hunters and their families who will be hurt the most.

The Canadian government isn't moving on this only because it's a cash cow for them (although I agree that's certainly part of it), it's also because there's little in the way of alternative employment for many seal hunters. The Canadian government has a history of telling Aboriginal people that they're not allowed to hunt anymore. Unfortunately, stuff like this tends to be the result, so I can see why they're slow to cave to outside pressure to end the hunt.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I don't think it's fair to expect the government to outlaw the seal hunt until there is enough infrastructure in remote areas to allow alternative industries to develop.

Over the next few months, the vast seasonal fields of ice that extend off the Atlantic coast of Canada, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence out to Newfoundland and Labrador, will be the theatre for the annual ritual of the Canadian Seal Hunt, the largest directed hunt of marine mammals anywhere in the world.

The contemporary seal hunt in Atlantic Canada is conducted mainly by land-based sealers with commercial licences issued by the Federal Government. The vast majority of seals that die are young harp seal "beater" pups between 3 weeks and 12 months of age, killed by clubs, hakapiks, shotguns and high-powered rifles. Although the sealing season extends from November to May, in practice the majority of sealing occurs between early March and May in two major areas: the "Gulf" of St. Lawrence (starting in mid-March) and the "Front" off Newfoundland and Labrador (starting in mid-April). This year, up to 350,000 seals may be taken legally, while many more may be lost at sea, dying from wounds inflicted during hunting activities.

[...]

The economic rationale for continuing the hunt is also questionable. Since the 1983 EEC ban on the import of whitecoat pelts, long-term substitute markets for seal products abroad have failed to materialize. As a result, the millions of dollars that provincial and federal governments continue to invest in the form of sealing subsidies are barely covered by the revenue generated by the hunt.

The most concerning aspect of the hunt is its record on animal welfare. Provincial and federal governments and sealing organizations have dismissed the many documented episodes of inhumane sealing practices as unrepresentative of the hunt as a whole. This latter assertion, however, has been recently refuted with the issue of a 2001 report by an international team of veterinary experts who observed sealers at work and conducted post-mortem examinations of seals killed on the ice. Their findings were alarming: 79% of sealers did not check to see if a seal was dead before skinning it, and 42% of the animals examined had head injuries that were insufficient to have killed them outright. In effect, not only did these animals not die immediately, there is a strong chance that they were also skinned alive. If this study is representative of the hunt at large, more than 100,000 seals may die like this in 2004.

So, in its present form, the hunt would appear to be conducted inhumanely, managed ineffectively, unsound economically, and unsustainable ecologically. With so much going against it, why does it continue? Well, many Canadians (and foreign tourists) remain unaware that a large-scale seal hunt continues today, and assurances of effective hunt practice and management from the Government continue to suppress rebellion from within and concern from abroad. Certainly, the current Canadian government, in power for more than a decade, has never expressed anything other than support for the hunt, and it would be no surprise if they feel the need to continue funding this cultural bastion, more so today than at any time, because previous governments have let the people of the Maritimes down so badly by mismanaging their fisheries to the point of collapse.

[...]

Are there real alternatives to the seal hunt? Well, the economic argument for investment in tourism as a regional enterprise is compelling. For example, in 2001, the estimated landed value of 226,000 harp seals - about 205,000 of which were landed in Newfoundland and Labrador - was $5.5 million. In contrast, in 2002, the Newfoundland and Labrador economy received $300 million in expenditures related to tourism, a figure that had doubled from 1992. The question is: Will tourism flourish in the Maritimes if the hunt continues unabated?