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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 9658
[Animals]
Date Posted:
4/13/2004
1:59:24 pm EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 8,353
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Comments: 32
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Canada's Biggest Seal Hunt In 50 Years Draws Protest
Author: Robert Melnbardis, Reuters Source: ENN
Title: CANADA'S BIGGEST SEAL HUNT IN 50 YEARS DRAWS PROTEST
Canada's biggest seal hunt in 50 years began off the coast of Newfoundland Monday to howls of protest from animal rights advocates, but buoyed by international markets for pelts and sympathetic domestic newspaper editorials.
"This hunt is bigger than it's ever been," said Rebecca Aldworth, who is leading the antihunt campaign at the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "When you see this hunt for yourself, there is very little way that you can walk away supporting it."
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans authorized an increase in the quota for northwest Atlantic harp seals, and officials expect this season's hunt to reach 350,000. Last year's catch topped 300,000.
Ottawa says there are valid environmental reasons for allowing the hunt to continue.
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Community Thoughts: There are 32 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| MMMMMM, Seal | Apr 15th. at 3:32:25 pm EDT |
by chris (Canada) - wc_xemail
This is inhumane, blah, blah, blah...
All animals are killed for food by their predators.
I think those people opposed to the hunt would have a different opinion living up here.
My main income, and food supply is seafood.
If they opened the hunt for lobsters no one would complain, because lobsters aren't cute. Boo hoo.
Without my fur parka, I'd freeze to death up here.
And Just so you know, seal meat is quite tasty.
Preparing for the hunt,
Chris
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| Which Would You Prefer... | Apr 15th. at 1:14:20 pm EDT |
by Maaike (St.John's, Newfoundland) - wc_xemail
... that the seals be killed quickly with two blows, in the space of a few seconds, or shot from a distance? One blow to stun, and one to break the neck, or a bullet that coul very easily miss the head and simlpy injure the animal? This isn't a deer; if you don't kill it with your first shot, it swims under the ice and is gone. You can't track it and put it out of its misery or even collect the carcass so that its death would not be a complete waste. It will either die a slow, painful death, or spend a few slow, painful months recovering (*if* it recovers completely and is not somehow handicapped and living a painful life for however many years it has left) .
And another thing. Sure, lots of the people buying seal pelts do it only for the luxury, which I personally find difficult to condone, but a lot of others buy them out of necessity. I have a synthetic coat, supposedly rated for -35 weather, but at the tender age of four years it is no longer windproof, and even temperatures of -15 are enough to make me shiver. My friend's dad, on the other hand, has a seal fur coat he inherited from his father; it's over fifty years old, still wind- and water-proof, and still more than warm enough to get him through the winter. Plus, it's more environmentally friendly in the long run; a hell of a lot more resources went into making my coat than did his.
(Almost as a side note, where the f*ck are some of you getting your information from? A number of posters have decried slaughtering baby seals... They aren't the ones being slaughtered! The government outlawed hunting white-coats in 1986.)
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| Eat It | Apr 15th. at 10:45:49 am EDT |
by Wally Woola (bismark north dakota) - wc_xemail
i dont think you can say yes or no to the hunt unless youve eaten seal meat and know what it tastes like. you might like it. you can get all kinds of meat. but i've never seen seal meat in the store. you probably have to cook it special so its not tought. id like to try it. anybody no where?
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| My Canadian Neighbors- | Apr 14th. at 7:56:55 pm EDT |
by Anneka (Dayton, NV) - wc_xemail
Please don't judge all American's views by what you've read here. Some of us DO understand the need for the hunt.
If you guys want to get all up in arms over the seals (because they're cute and cuddly!) then you should have yoru knickers in a twist 24-7. Plenty of animals are treated far less humanely than the seals. Besides that, those cute cuddly seals (like cute, cuddly bear cubs) turn into some pretty fearsome beasts when they grow up.
The "film" that was attached to someone's link is pure propaganda. Do you think it would have been shot in a "fair and balanced" way? My Gods, it's put out by people trying to stop the hunting.
I have high hopes that the seals are used for lots of clothing, meat, and leftover bits for the local wildlife.
A
(who happens to have a houseful of critters- you like animals, go out and adopt a homeless, old or special needs critter.)
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| I Don't Personally Approve | Apr 14th. at 7:43:59 pm EDT |
by Mediumcool Girl (Ann Arbor, MI) - wc_xemail - Web
It would however, be better to shoot them in the head - a quick, nearly painless death, less messy, too.
Some links with alternatives and discussion on seal hunting. Find More info -- HERE
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| Of Course It's Not Nice! | Apr 14th. at 7:10:04 pm EDT |
by Girly (Vancouver, B.C., Canada) - wc_xemail
Look! It has to be done! No one likes it. It's not like "woo, look, pa, a seal hunt!"
It is a necessity. Stop pointing fingers at when you have no idea what it's like up here. Let's not forget all the American companies up in Alaska that are catching all the fish before they swim further down the coast. Instead of cringing and whimpering about how "terrible" it is and how you simply cannot "abide" by it, come up with a better solution.
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| Seems To Be Divided ... | Apr 14th. at 6:34:52 pm EDT |
by Cheryl (Oakville, ON Canada) - wc_xemail
along boundry lines, just as another poster mentioned.
The Canadians on the thread understand the need, since a lot of us live closer to the land than our American counterparts. We are well informed by our media when the seal hunt starts, why it is being done, what the repercussions are, etc etc etc.
We may not like the fact that it needs to be done, but it DOES need to be done. Were the huge seal population living along the east coast of the U.S. this would still be happening, but since the U.S. media has a tendency toward not telling their populace about anything, I would very highly doubt you would hear about it.
I am sure that there are states that cull their seal population also, but the media just doesn't carry the information.
C.
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| Logic... | Apr 14th. at 4:32:51 pm EDT |
by catalina (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - wc_xemail
But if nature is to be let to do what it does then we must accept that we are part of nature ourselves. I do not condone factory farming, animal abuse, or any of the myriad actions people take that are cruel to animals, but in terms of something that has been going on forever, well it seems strange to just stop it. Hunting an animal is different from caging it up for all of its life and then murdering it.
Animals are our peers? Okay. Then we're animals ourselves. Animals hunt other animals; that's what they do, and that's what we do.
Somehow this is less reprehensible to me than cooping up birds, giving them no natural life, and then killing them. A small step of logic seems to be missing here...
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| Re | Apr 14th. at 3:36:21 pm EDT |
by Allison (USA) - wc_xemail
Sorry - I have ZERO tolerance for this kind of thing. Animals are our equals and should be treated with the same respect.
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| One Other Thing | Apr 14th. at 3:01:34 pm EDT |
by dancewitch (Eastern Canada) - wc_xemail
Has anyone here considered the overfishing that takes place and the longliners that drag everything out of the ocean? I don't think you can completely blame seals for lack of fish. Humans had one heck of a lot to do with it too. John Cabot described teeming waters full of fish when he arrived on our coasts. Who changed that? Geez, I think it was humans.
However, we do need to get back in balance and if killing a few seals humanely will do that, then I guess it has to happen, but the word "humanely" applies I hope. I cringe at the thought of it though.
BB,
Dancewitch
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| Inappropriate Commentary | Apr 14th. at 1:28:51 pm EDT |
by catalina (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - wc_xemail
I think it is thoroughly entertaining to see the sharp division here; the Canadians on this thread seem to be aware of the legality, safety, and environmental importance whereas the Americans seem to be spouting whatever knee-jerk response comes to mind. Is this division obvious to anyone else?
Humans ARE part of a natural ecosystem. Humans have ALWAYS culled seals and I don't know when that suddenly became evil. I find it extremely hard to believe that anyone here walks everywhere, wears only clothing made from organic hemp, lives in a house with no painted or treated wood, is a lifestyle vegan, and uses no plastic. I don't think so. I guess it's easy to criticize with no understanding of the situation.
I'm no fan of animal cruelty. I have been a strict vegetarian for ten years, I would consider myself an environmentalist, and I'm a botanist (read: fan of nature) , and yet I can grasp why this hunt is taking place: for the same reason it always has, because humans are natural predators of seals, just as bears are natural predators of fish.
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| Red In Tooth And Claw | Apr 14th. at 1:10:09 pm EDT |
by epona (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - wc_xemail
To people who say they should kill the adults, but not the babies. What do you think will happen to the babies when the adults are dead? In nature, the highest mortality accrued by a species is always the babies. Predators pick off the young and defenseless, and biological systems are built to withstand mass loss of young, but not breeding adults. Much more damage would be done to a population by killing adults than unweaned young.
To people who say we're sick because we're killing things to make up for the damage we'd already done to the ecosystem. What would you do? We created a big problem, and now we have to fix it, or it will only get worse. Just leaving the seal population to get larger saying everything will sort itself out defies logic. Pretend that the whale and polar bear population spontaneously comes back (and pretend that people are not an ecologically important predator for the seals in this area) and the seal population is reduced by "natural" predation. Have you ever seen a bear or whale eat a seal? I can assure you, they have no emotional qualms, and often play with their prey like a cat before they die. Whales will often isolate the pup in the water, circling it and pushing it further out from its mother while it bawls for her, until it gets too weak to continue struggling, and allows the whale to toss it about like a ball at SeaWorld before it rips it apart, or swallows it whole.
There is a reason people saw the whales as threatening, and had no problems hunting them. Remember, we called them Killer Whales, and so branded them to be okay to die. Just like all those Newfie murderers whose lives you'd rather take than a seal.
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| Split Down The Middle | Apr 14th. at 10:39:39 am EDT |
by Eli (wendell NC) - wc_xemail
We seem to be split down the middle on this subject. I am a meat eater and I know how my food is killed. I may be a bit perturbed at the brutality, but thats the way the cookie crumbles so to speak. Now when it comes to animals being used for other things like clothing, at least they are using them instead of just destroying an inconvenience. Synthetic fibers do not biodegrade easy. Many poisonous chemicals are created from the production of synthetic objects. Animals have the same right to breath the air as we do. I'm not for or agianst this because even though it may seem brutal it will be done. If you dont condone killing an animal then dont be an oxymoron and condone killing a man. In closing, Creatures will die with or without us, Some may die badly and others might not, We are part of the sacred cycle and will play our part.
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| We Do Kill Them Humanely! | Apr 14th. at 3:12:59 am EDT |
by Ronin (Alberta, Canada) - wc_xemail
First: clubbing an animal is a humane way to kill them when it is done properly. The movie clips you see supplied by animal rights and environmental organizations purposely focus on the rare incidents when the killing is done improperly in order to elicit an emotional response from those who don't have all of the facts. Yes I did say rare because our government does monitor this hunt quite closely.
The majority of the kills utilize two blows; not the never ending multiple bludgeoning you see on TV and in the news. One blow is delivered to the head to stun the animal and is quickly followed by a second blow to the neck breaking it and rendering the animal dead. The whole process takes about 10-15 seconds. I see no difference in this and using high voltage electricity to kill cows or plunging chickens and/or lobster into boiling hot water.
Killing an animal is never pretty no matter how humanely it is carried out. The problem is that very few of us give this much thought when purchasing the many items we use everyday that come from animals.
Second: No synthetic coat has yet been developed that will keep you toasty warm at a hundred below (Fahrenheit or Centigrade) . Most people in this part of the world can tell you that their winter parka rated for -35 degrees C ( -31 degrees F) is only good to about -15 to -20 C ( +5 to -4 F) . If synthetic fibers do such a good job then why do the Inuit and Eskimo still insist on wearing fur even when they relocate to our major cities in the south?
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| Just A Thought | Apr 14th. at 12:51:43 am EDT |
by Prophet (Japan) - wc_xemail
Let us go back in time 100 years. Go to New Foundland and see what is going on there. You will probably see someone clubbing a baby seal or shooting it. That is a way of life. The people of the world (all of them) messed things up in the past but they thought it was for the best.
Let us take a hypothetical situation. Does any one out there have a problem with Humanity wiping out... AIDS? *listens for some one to say that they do* Now what if 100 years form now we as Humans find out that AIDS just also happens to be the one thing that kept another more dangerous virus, from touching us. Or even better, that it destroyed something that is seen as wonderful that soon becomes so prevalant that it begins to choke off our livelyhood. THe environmentalists of that time would look back and say that we should have found a way to fight the virus without destroying it. Think on that.
In the late 1800's and early 1900's Killer whales and polar bears were seen as a menace. People went out and killed these creatures because of several reasons. One of them was that they were seen as dangerous. They did kill people.
My situation earlier is a bit extreme but it is one of the things that could happen. Think about the big picture before you look at the picture of the baby seal. I believe that clubbing baby seals is wrong. I think it should be done more humanely. Just think before you react please.
Blessed Be.
Prophet
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