Animal rights group blames culling for seal deaths in Namibia

THE method of culling small seal pups is causing the mass mortalities of seals along the Namibian coast, and not a shortage of fish, an animal rights group said yesterday.

Commercial cullers club nursing seal pups to death with wooden logs. This method is very traumatic for the pups and their mothers, causing the pups to flee from the seal colonies, but they are too young to survive on their own, according to Seal Alert South Africa.The Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources said last week that the large numbers of dead seals seen at the coast are due to starvation because of a lack of fish.”The death by starvation of these seals is the direct result of the daily disturbance inflicted upon these seals by these barbaric club-wielding sealers, who do their killing every morning between 0h500 and 10h00 from July to November,” Francois Hugo of Seal Alert SA in Cape Town said yesterday.Cape fur seals nurse their pups for up to 12 months.The bond between pups and their mothers is much stronger than with other seal species, which wean their pups after three weeks, he pointed out.As far back as 1987, countries that culled Harp seals – Canada, Greenland, Russia and Norway – all banned the practice of clubbing nursing baby seals to death in nursing and breeding grounds, Hugo said in a statement.”This method is in fact the cause of the reported mass starvation and mortality being reported,” the animal rights organisation said.Pups separate from their mothers and then starve to death, while traumatised seal cows abort foetuses or abandon the newborn, Hugo said.It is for these reasons that the USA banned the import of Cape fur seal skins in 1977, and the EU banned imports in 1983, he said.”Namibia remains the only country in the world to slaughter nursing baby seals in birthing and breeding grounds.”Conservationally and ethnically it is an unsound practice to allow an annual commercial sealing industry to go into seal nursing and breeding grounds, where baby seals are still nursing, and begin an annual clubbing cull of these seals.”The Ministry’s attempt to use the collapse of the pilchard resource as the reason for widespread starvation and mass mortality among seals was tantamount to “public fraud”, Seal Alert SA said.Attempts to obtain comment from the Ministry of Fisheries yesterday were unsuccessful.This method is very traumatic for the pups and their mothers, causing the pups to flee from the seal colonies, but they are too young to survive on their own, according to Seal Alert South Africa.The Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources said last week that the large numbers of dead seals seen at the coast are due to starvation because of a lack of fish.”The death by starvation of these seals is the direct result of the daily disturbance inflicted upon these seals by these barbaric club-wielding sealers, who do their killing every morning between 0h500 and 10h00 from July to November,” Francois Hugo of Seal Alert SA in Cape Town said yesterday.Cape fur seals nurse their pups for up to 12 months.The bond between pups and their mothers is much stronger than with other seal species, which wean their pups after three weeks, he pointed out.As far back as 1987, countries that culled Harp seals – Canada, Greenland, Russia and Norway – all banned the practice of clubbing nursing baby seals to death in nursing and breeding grounds, Hugo said in a statement.”This method is in fact the cause of the reported mass starvation and mortality being reported,” the animal rights organisation said.Pups separate from their mothers and then starve to death, while traumatised seal cows abort foetuses or abandon the newborn, Hugo said.It is for these reasons that the USA banned the import of Cape fur seal skins in 1977, and the EU banned imports in 1983, he said.”Namibia remains the only country in the world to slaughter nursing baby seals in birthing and breeding grounds.”Conservationally and ethnically it is an unsound practice to allow an annual commercial sealing industry to go into seal nursing and breeding grounds, where baby seals are still nursing, and begin an annual clubbing cull of these seals.”The Ministry’s attempt to use the collapse of the pilchard resource as the reason for widespread starvation and mass mortality among seals was tantamount to “public fraud”, Seal Alert SA said.Attempts to obtain comment from the Ministry of Fisheries yesterday were unsuccessful.