Sealing unsustainably

Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 15:10:17 -0400 (AST)
From: Martin Willison <willison@is.dal.ca>
To: sust-mar@chebucto.ns.ca
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <sust-mar-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>

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URGENT: CANADIAN SEAL "HARVEST" QUOTA EXCESSIVE

Recent scientific studies by David Lavigne and colleagues 
of the International Marine Mammal Association show that 
the rate at which harp seals are being killed by hunters 
in Canada is unsustainable.  Please write to Canada's
Minister of Fisheries & Oceans to express your concern.  

Since 1971 Canada has set a quota for a commercial (i.e. non-
aboriginal) harp seal hunt, conducted mostly in Newfoundland 
and Labrador.  In some years the total kill rate has been less 
than the increment resulting from births, rendering the hunt 
sustainable, but substantially increased quotas were approved 
for the hunts in 1996-1999.  

Lavigne calculates that the "total removals" from the population 
(i.e. the numbers of animals killed by humans by all means) in 
the 1998 season alone lay somewhere between 400,000 and 550,000, 
for a total 3-year (1996-98) mean-estimate kill of around 1.4 
million individuals.  The total population size is not currently 
known, but in 1994 it was estimated to be 4.8 million and 
exhibiting an annual "replacement yield" of about 287,000.  

Canada calculates the quota by using a population model based 
on this 1994 census and the reported landed catch from the
commercial hunt.  This method ignores the hunt carried out in 
Greenland (about 100,000 killed), the Inuit landings, fishery 
by-catches, and animals that are shot and die at sea.  By 
using an inadequate method to calculate kill rates, Canada seems 
to be conducting a seal cull presented as a sustainable hunt.  

Please write, as soon as possible (and before January
2000) to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to request that
Canada's policy on setting seal hunt quotas be revised
immediately, and the quota lowered.  Please note that this
request will not detract from subsistence seal hunting by 
Inuit and other First Nation groups, whose hunts are based 
on rights not quotas.  Indeed, by helping to maintain the seal
herd, First Nation hunting rights will be better protected.

Please write to:

The Honorable Herb Dhaliwal
Minister of Fisheries and Oceans
200 Kent Street
Ottawa
Ontario, Canada K1A 0E6  

AND/OR

FAX:  (613) 995-2962 
EMAIL:  min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

[Ed: Why not send a fax via email for free?
<remote-printer.Herb_Dhaliwal@16139952962.iddd.tpc.int>



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