Canada's annual cull of baby seals will be allowed to continue on a higher level as lobbyists urge the government to lift curbs on the brutal slaughters.
Every year, the government allows the mass sealing that sees the animals' fur sold off and the recent news has reportedly prompted fresh lobbying of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The season has attracted criticism from animal rights campaigners as the methods used by sealers include the clubbing of the young seals, impaling with pick axes and shooting.
Most are pups between two weeks and three months old and pictures from The Human Society have shown them being bludgeoned, clubbed and dragged onto fishing boats.
Seals are clubbed to death during the annual hunt before being skinned. These images show a fisherman killing a seal in 2015
A seal hunter returns with pelts after braving the ice off the coast of Pointe-aux-Loups in the Magdalen Islands, Canada in 2008
In the last five years over 1,000,000 seals have been killed but now, lobbyists are asking for curbs on commercial sealing licenses to be lifted, to allow the hunt in a Quebec nature reserve and to launch a mass commercial seal hunt in British Columbia, report The Independent.
Seals killed are Harp Seals and to a lesser extent, Grey Seals. Figures show that since 2002, a huge 2,634,800 Harp Seals have been killed with 66,800 alone in 2016 - by an less than 1000 estimated active sealers.
The recent number of seals killed is a significant drop in numbers from the mid-to-late noughties with 218,000 harp seals killed in 2008, 355,000 in 2006 and a jaw-dropping 366,000 in 2004.
A picture captured by The Humane Society shows a sealing vessel leaving a trail of blood
The recent news has reportedly prompted fresh lobbying of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
A fishing and harp seal hunting boat looms behind a harp seal pup resting on a greatly diminished ice pack in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Quebec, Canada
The reason for the drop in number of animals killed is a near world-wide ban of sales of the seals' fur, which has seen the global market collapse. Opposition to the culling say the quota for killings goes up every year, even while the demand for pelts drops.
The Humane Society are leading the charge against the hunt off Canada's East Coast, in and around Newfoundland, they argue that it is even Government subsidised since 37 countries banned seal pelt imports.
The body said that it is brutal, not economically important and also dispute the fact that it is important to protect fish populations.
According to the body, 6000 fishermen take part in the off-season cull and it equates to only one twentieth of their income.
Seal hunters use a hakapik, a club used for killing seals, to kill a seal near their boat in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence
'Some fishing industry lobby groups try to claim that seals must be culled to protect fish stocks, but nothing could be further from the truth,' said the society.
They content that the true cause of the depletion of fish stocks off Canada's East Coast is human over-fishing.
The Pacific Balance Pinniped Society, a sealing group, claim that waters around British Colombia are 'plagued by an overpopulation' of seals and sea lions and the cull is therefore needed to combat this.
Scientists dispute this argument and say that it could even endanger whales, saying a fall in their pray could starve them.
'Seals are being used as a scapegoat, just like whales were once blamed for fishery declines,' Hal Whitehead, a marine biologist from Halifax, Nova Scotia, told The Guardian.
The Humane society branded landing the blame on seals for falling fish numbers 'a convenient way for the fishing industry' to divert attention from its 'irresponsible and environmentally destructive practices that continue today.'
There have also been suggestions of pups being skinned alive and their meat being left in a pile to rot as the market is for their oil and their penises as an aphrodisiac in some parts of Asia.
In order to avoid damage to the pelts, most are killed with clubs or a ‘hakapik’ – a seal hunting tool which has a hammer head used to crush their skulls, and a hook used to drag away the carcass.
The culling was largely damaged by the EU's banning of the import of seal skins. India most recently joined the ban which numbers 37 countries, including the US.
photo link
https://textbacklinkexchanges.com/canadian-hunters-want-to-club-tens-of-thousands-more-seals-for-their-fur-in-massive-cull-expansion/
News Photo Canadian hunters want to club tens of thousands more seals for their fur in massive cull expansion
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