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IFAW and the Seal Hunt – A Brief History

The International Fund for Animal Welfare, or IFAW, became known around the world in the 1970s and 1980s as it led the fight to stop the cruel slaughter of Canadian seal pups. IFAW’s historic success in the 1980s — the virtual collapse of the commercial seal hunt as a result of import bans on whitecoat seal pelts — is considered to be one of the most visible and important wins in the animal protection movement.

Beginning in 1996, the Canadian government provided large subsidies to rebuild the sealing industry around the pelts from seals that have just molted their white fur, called beaters.

Over the last few years, the Canadian government has raised the annual seal hunt quotas to the highest level in history, taking almost a million seals in a three year period. Yet international pressure to end the seal hunt is growing, with Belgium recently becoming the first European country to ban all seal products. Other EU countries are also working to enact their own seal product bans, thanks to the efforts of IFAW and others.

Of every dollar spent around the world during the past three years, more than 83 cents went directly to animal welfare programs and institutional costs. IFAW continues the costly, dangerous task of documenting the seal hunt each year, as well as:

• Fighting to secure bans on all seal products across Europe
• Researching the economic costs/benefits of the seal hunt and its byproducts, as well as the population and conservation issues
• Bringing journalists to the ice
• Generating a global media presence around the seal hunt issue through the production of PSAs and other forms of media
• Attending key conferences to reinforce or re-establish international laws to protect seals
• Conducting research on the impact of global warming on seals and publicizing the results

Today, with offices in 15 countries, IFAW is the world’s leading animal welfare organization, preserving species and protecting habitat, rescuing animals in distress, and providing them shelter and rehabilitation.

Top Three Seal Hunt Myths

Here are the top three myths told by Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) about the commercial seal hunt:

Myth #1: The seal hunt is humane.

Do seal hunters really kill baby seals? View Baby Seal Slideshow to Find Out.

“A sealer near us quickly clubbed every seal within a small radius to immobilize each of the pups, and then dragged the bodies to the center of his circle. One by one he flipped a seal on its back and skinned it. If the seal flipped around or fought against the skinning he’d flip it back to its stomach, club it several more times and then finish the skinning.” — [IFAW Hunt Monitor]

Canada’s commercial seal hunt is a hunt like no other. It is a cruel and unethical practice that produces a product nobody needs. In fact, 98% of the animals killed in the past two years have been seal pups aged about 2 weeks to 3 months. This unmanageable hunt takes place over a vast area, making it impossible to carry out humanely.

All available evidence, including veterinary reports and independent observations, indicates that each year tens of thousands of seal pups die in an unacceptably cruel manner inconsistent with contemporary animal welfare standards.

Year after year, observers report abuses such as the hooking and dragging of live seals across the ice, seals clubbed or shot and left to suffer on the ice, and seals skinned while conscious. Some seals are shot or killed with a blow to the head using a wooden club or hakapik. The sealers stun as many baby seals as they can before going back to kill them. Some seals try to get away, but they are clumsy on the ice, heaving their fat little bodies with an uncoordinated flipper shuffle. Other seals are shot from a distance and then dragged from the ice onto boats using steel hooks. Many are left to suffer on the ice, before being clubbed again some time thereafter. Some seals are still skinned before being rendered fully unconscious and few sealers are observed checking for a blinking reflex to confirm brain death prior to skinning an animal.

What do veterinary groups really think about how humane the commercial seal hunt is? Download IFAW’s report comparing the independent findings of two veterinary panels on the cruelty of the seal hunt.

And while all recent veterinary reports recommend reducing the suffering of seals, their recommendations have not been implemented. Two recent independent veterinary reports on the Canadian seal hunt, as well as IFAW video footage, have documented unacceptable levels of cruelty to baby seals. This hunt is a highly competitive activity, carried out over an extensive area, and under very unpredictable conditions. Haste is the rule, as hunters rush to immobilize as many baby seals as possible in the short time available to them. As one of the veterinary reports concluded: “Canada’s commercial seal hunt results in considerable and unacceptable suffering.”

The Canadian government often misleads the public by comparing the commercial seal hunt to the killing of farm animals in the food industry. Unlike abattoirs, the seal hunt is an unpredictable, unmanageable hunt for wild animals which takes place under hurried conditions. It is precisely these conditions that have led some experts to conclude that this hunt can never satisfy the requirements of a humane hunt.

Myth #2: The seal hunt is sustainable.

A recent scientific study (Leaper and Matthews 2006) examining the Canadian government’s approach for determining the population status for Northwest Atlantic harp seals revealed that the current approach to managing the seal hunt risks seriously depleting the harp seal population by as much as 50 to 70 percent over the next 15 years.

Removing so many animals from any one population places the species at an unnecessary and significant risk. Seal catch quotas set by the Canadian government are much higher than government scientists’ estimates of what is sustainable, and these quotas are allowed to be exceeded. Over the last few years, the Canadian government has raised the annual seal hunt quotas to the highest levels in history, killing almost a million seals in just a three year period. The Total Allowable Catch quota for seals was 85,000 animals higher in 2006 than the “sustainable yield” estimated by Canadian government scientists. A recent study by IFAW scientists found that the current management approach risks depleting the harp seal herd by as much as 70% in the next 15 years.

Seals and Global Warming Download IFAW’s report on the Impact of Global Warming for Seals.

The history of wildlife conservation shows that when large mammals like seals have a price placed on their heads – or hides – the end result is almost always overexploitation. To ensure that wild populations are not put at risk by human activity, a precautionary approach is needed. Yet the DFO management plan does not adequately account for either scientific or environmental uncertainty. The DFO often states that the harp seal population has tripled since the 1970s. However, this ignores the fact that between 1950 and 1970 the harp seal population was reduced by as much as two-thirds from seal hunting. Since 1995, harp seals have been killed at levels similar to those that caused a dangerous decline in the past, and the DFO now admits that the population has decreased.

Climate change is also presenting a new threat to the harp seal population by negatively impacting their breeding habitat. Increasingly, poor ice conditions off the east coast of Canada are causing higher than normal seal pup mortality. For example, government scientists estimate that in 2002, 75% of the seal pups in the Gulf of St. Lawrence died due to a lack of ice before the hunt even began. A recent scientific study released by IFAW also shows that in nine of the past eleven years, average ice coverage has fallen to well below levels seen over the last 37 years. This lack of stable ice is negatively impacting the harp seal population which requires sea ice for pupping and nursing its young.

Yet despite all this evidence, the Canadian government continues to set total allowable catches for harp seals above sustainable levels, putting the population at increased risk. And even though it has indicated that it is dedicated to taking ‘real action’ on global warming. Why do they not start by ending the unsustainable and unnecessary hunt for harp seals?

Myth #3: The seal hunt is closely monitored and well managed.

The seal hunt involves thousands of sealers competing for a limited number of seals during a short period of time. Sealers are concerned with clubbing or shooting as many animals as quickly as possible instead of checking to see if a seal is dead before moving on to club or shoot the next one.

Year after year, IFAW hunt observers encounter seals that have been clubbed and left to suffer on the ice, bleeding profusely, crying, breathing and attempting to crawl. These are not “reflexes” as the DFO claims, which are easily recognized and familiar to experience seal hunt observers.

During 2006, the DFO claimed to have had 12 monitors for the Gulf hunt, the largest enforcement effort ever. Yet sealers in one region were allowed to take three times their quota without any consequences. In fact the Total Allowable Catch has been exceeded in four of the past five years.

Take Action to End the Seal Hunt

The IFAW offers participation in a range of possible support actions to

• stop the cruel and unethical practice of Canada’s annual commercial harp seal hunt that produces a product nobody needs
• put and end to the brutal killing of innocent animals, 98% of whom killed in the past two years have been seals pups between 2 weeks to 3 months old
• force the Canadian government to abandon its policy of allocating annual seal hunt quotas for a species that already is exposed to the potentially devastating effects of global warming

One possible action is to urge the Canadian Prime Minister and Canadian Ambassador to end the cruelty of the seal hunt by completing the letter that can either be emailed or posted in the old-fashioned way - click on this link to participate. You can add your own comments to make you letter even more effective. After your letter is submitted, you will be prompted to enter your profile into the 300,000 Actions for 300,000 Seals global community.

Another way to support the IFAW’s work is to talk to as many people as possible about the Canadian government sanctioned killing sprees and encourage your friends and others to join the activities of the IFAW or support the group financially (see below). One way to reach others is your blog (if you have one) or your social network presence like on MySpace, Facebook or Second Life; go to the “Help Promote StoptheSealHunt.org Online” page for suggestions how you can link your blog to the IFAW’s site.

Finally you can support the IFAW by making a donation to save the lives of harp seal pups. Your financial gift helps the organisation to put seal hunt monitors on the ice, fight for more seal product bans in Europe and conduct vital scientific research to help save seals. Of every dollar spent around the world during the past three years, more than 83 cents went directly to animal welfare programs and institutional costs. To make your donation, click on this link.

Toni Bower expressed a lot of irritation about internet buzzwords. Apparently (unfortunately I couldn’t find the survey) British pollsters YouGov recently questioned 2,091 adults about what Internet words are most likely to make them “wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard.” ‘Folksonomy’ topped the list, followed by ‘blogosphere’, ‘netiquette’ coming fourth, ‘blook’ (new to me: a book based on a blog) fifth, ‘cookie’ ninth and ‘wiki’ tenth.

I’m not sure what the fuss is all about, but I did have many conversations with friends before about changes in language, ranging from grammar to spelling to the introduction of new words, so the topic is not new to me. And like before, I also have to say in this case of internet buzzwords that they too are a wonderful expression of our culture and therefore our language being alive. I guess that some people have a general problem with the fact that that life means constant change; they would like to see the world around them become one big frozen comfort zone where change takes place on a cosmic time scale. Others, while being more accepting of’ life’s nature incessantly being on the move, do nevertheless like to preserve the language they know, maybe as an island of stability in an ever faster pace of life. More likely though they don’t like the underlying changes that find new expressions in language, but rather than questioning the their dynamics, they just get worked up about language.

Language expresses and communicates meaning; if we don’t like the way we or others make sense of the world, let’s talk about that rather than attacking the very surface. Let’s talk about the ‘what’ a word stands for and the ‘why’ it’s doing so. Let’s look at the nature of our discomfort about what’s behind the word, let’s deconstruct meaning intellectually, emotionally and experientially and look at the components that seem to contribute to it. Toni Bower mentioned the word ’synergy’ and its place in the corporate world - its genesis, function and history would reveal a lot about the nature and purpose of corporations in our society. Using ’synergy’ as an entry point to critical reflection might lead to more constructive and deeper change than lambasting it and trying to get it out of our dictionaries. The same goes for those internet words above: why not ask ‘what kind of culture are they part of, how do we feel about it, would we rather see it being replaced by a different one, what that one look like’? Such an approach would do much more for the reader of an article and also most likely for the author than simply rubbishing cultural expressions with a handful of meagre, one-dimensional sentences devoid of much meaning.

Apart from a kind of culturally contextual engagement with words though, there is of course also an aspect of functionality to them (even though that one does not exist as a ‘pure’ quality): do they describe s.th. in a way that makes sense to the reader or listener or at least to most of them? And even if that is not necessarily the case: is that the problem of the word’s creator or more of then one who resists the journey of discovery - critical and otherwise? I like to repeat here what I already said above: that in most situations where people don’t like a word, it is their problem. Conservatism, the desire to hold on to the familiar, fear of the unknown or simply laziness are some of the psychological and intellectual characteristics that create resistance and belligerence. And what better remedy for such souls than a good old challenge! Bring those words on and more of them !

And on that note: I think it’s great that we managed to create blogosphere and blook and cookie, and I find it very comforting to know that they are expressions within a process that fortunately will never stop. Just click the thumbnail below to appreciate this fact; change creates diversity, and blossoming diversity creates a rich fabric of life.

Things come an go in life, and that certainly goes for highly hyped products. The iPhone hysteria recently made me wonder how the world will regard this product in let’s say a year’s time, and so I was pleasantly surprised to find on the TechRepublic site a brief retrospective of tech’s 10 most hyped products. This list most likely is highly subjective but nevertheless interesting. Most products though I have been blissfully unaware of as a non-gamer.

Talking about non-attachment. Some people certainly have their ways of expressing curiosity; and that after probably lining up in long queue, spending US$600 and getting a 2-year AT&T contract - unless they also have their ways of acquiring research objects .

The geeks at TechRepublic probably went about it in a slightly more sensitive way because they not only managed to assemble an interesting photo gallery (see below) but also re-assemble the phone to full working conditions - impressive.