EXCLUSIVE: SEASON OF SLAUGHTER (Harp Seals in Canada)

[Guest guest]

EXCLUSIVE: SEASON OF SLAUGHTER

 

Source >

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16864766%26method=full%26siteid=6\

2484%26headline=exclusive%2d%2dseason%2dof%2dslaughter-name_page.html

 

 

 

Seal clubbing

Pups are clubbed & then skinned alive in front of

their mothers... You can hear their bleating as the

babies are dragged away

Dennis Ellam And Roland Leon In The Gulf Of St

Lawrence

 

BLOOD is spreading across the ice. Obscene scarlet on

pure white.

 

At the stroke of 6am yesterday - right on schedule -

Canada's annual slaughter of the seal pups got under

way.

 

It's the biggest and the most barbaric cull anywhere

on Earth.

 

By the time you read this 70,000 pups will have been

killed. A total of 325,000 will die - either clubbed

to death or shot - within the next three weeks. But it

might take just five days.

 

As dawn broke yesterday the bloodbath began, with men

jumping from their fleet of boats, running across the

ice, swinging their spiked clubs as they went.

 

The impassioned pleas of Paul and Heather McCartney

and Brigitte Bardot - and worldwide condemnation -

count for nothing out here. Thirty-eight years to the

day after our sister paper the Daily Mirror's iconic

front page revealed the horror of the cull to the

nation, nothing has changed.

 

Just 24 hours earlier, when we flew into this remote

wilderness, it was still untouched, a natural nursery

for thousands of month-old pups, basking on the ice in

the thin sunshine, their proud mothers beside them.

 

Today, the pups' freshly-skinned carcasses, still

steaming from their body heat, litter the ice. Their

mothers lie beside them, pining for their dead babies,

their mournful bleating carried in the cold air.

 

Nothing prepares you for such a sickening spectacle.

 

They call it a hunt, of course, to make it sound like

a noble challenge between man and beast. But a harp

seal can't run like a fox, it has nowhere to hide like

a deer in a forest, it can't fight back like a

grizzly. It just lies there, helplessly waiting to be

slaughtered.

 

It's only three weeks since the McCartneys came here,

to make their emotional and - out here - controversial

plea for the slaughter to be abandoned.

 

Canada's response? It promptly increased the quota

hunters are allowed to kill by another 5,000. " When

so-called celebrities come across here making their

pronouncements - wealthy people telling folks how they

should earn their living - well, we're outraged, "

government official Phil Jenkins, told me. " We don't

feel we need to justify the hunt to anyone. "

 

I paid £12 my " observer's " permit allowing me to watch

the slaughter. The " hunters " have paid just £2.50 each

for their licences to kill. A top hunter will bag

around 1,000 pups a week - and earn over £3,000.

 

This year, the Canadian government has decreed,

325,000 seal pups can be culled on their journey out

of the St Lawrence, from the breeding ground where

they were born to the open sea.

 

Most will die before they have even taken their first

swim.

 

There is simply no logic in the old argument that

seals have to be culled to keep their population down

and protect fish stocks. Nature has its own ways.

 

The waters in the Gulf are warming, the ice is thinner

than it has ever been in living memory.

 

For hundreds of square miles it is broken and cracked

like a vast crazy paving. Amazingly, our helicopter

pilot managed to put down photographer Roland Leon and

myself on a pan of ice that was barely any bigger than

the chopper, while the floe pitched and rolled all

around us in a raging gale.

 

In these treacherous conditions, . countless new-iborn

seals, would have I fallen into the sea and ' drowned

anyway.

 

In fact, as the Canadian government now admit, the

impetus for the hunt is commercial. It makes money.

 

Yesterday I watched in horror as the hunters swarmed

on to the ice with knives dangling from their belts

and their traditional " hakapik " clubs slung over their

shoulders.

 

The hakapik is a multipurpose killing tool - a heavy

wooden club, with a hammer head on one side to crush a

seal pup's skull, and on the other a hook to drag away

the carcass to be skinned.

 

THE first two days of the hunt are always the busiest,

I am told. There must be 50 men swarming over the ice

- and thousands of pups waiting to be slaughtered. So

many to kill, so little time.

 

The hunters are supposed to club them three times over

the head, then touch their eyeball to make sure they

are dead before being skinned.

 

A moment ago one baby seal was a living creature,

looking up towards its executioner, fear etched on its

face. Its last gesture is to open its mouth wide. A

silent cry for mercy.

 

Now it's a battered heap, waiting for the skinners who

follow the hunters. Blood runs from its wounds and its

mouth.

 

The force of the blows has forced its eyes from its

sockets. I turn away only to catch out of the corner

of my eye the sudden movement of a bloody shape.

 

A seasoned hunter will you tell this is just a death

spasm. Some vets, however, think differently.

 

According to one report, as many as 40 per cent of

seal pups could still be alive when they are skinned.

 

This one is wriggling and writhing in agony, as it is

dragged along, leaving a crimson trail. The hunters

lift it, still thrashing, aboard their boat to skin

out of sight of our camera.

 

Earlier I met Robbie Marsland in the offices of the

International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

 

HE showed me a collection of seal products - tins of

seal meat, hats and gloves made from seal fur, even a

seal's penis, a delicacy in the Far East where they

powder it down and drink it with wine as an

aphrodisiac.

 

Discreetly, the Canadians are now hoping to push seal

oil onto the market too, in Omega 3 capsules.

 

But the main prize is the skin. This year's price is

around £30 a pelt, boosted by a sudden demand from the

big fashion houses.

 

Last season, for example, you could have bought a

Gucci sealskin coat.

 

That's why the hunters prefer to club the pups' skulls

rather than shoot them and risk hitting the hide.

Nothing ruins a £1,000 Gucci coat more than an

unsightly bullet-hole.

 

In the isolated fishing communities around

Newfoundland and Labrador, they will tell you that the

seal hunt is vital to their way of life, and has been

for generations.

 

" A man has to feed his family, that's the stark truth

out here, " says Mark Small, 59, a hunter for more than

40 years, like his father and his grandfather before

him. " A guy can earn 6,000 dollars in a week. That's

one quarter of his annual income. How do you take that

away?

 

" The world thinks we're barbarians, but we're not. Our

ancestors settled here to work the oceans, and we have

respect for the animals that live here. Seals too. But

what do you do with pests in other countries? You get

rid of them.

 

" We don't need you folks to tell us how to run our

lives. "

 

_________________

 

HOW YOU CAN STOP THIS SLAUGHTER...

SIR Paul McCartney and wife Heather issued the

following statement through the Sunday Mirror...

" We are devastated to learn that 325,000 of these harp

seals - almost all of them defenceless babies - will

be clubbed and shot to death. Compassionate people

from all around the world are opposed to this seal

hunt, including the majority of Canadians, and we urge

them to contact their Prime Minister, Stephen Harper,

and ask him to ban the hunt.

 

" We chose to come out to the ice floes before the hunt

began because it would break our hearts to have to see

the cruelty of the hunt.

 

" But we are absolutely committed to making sure this

is the last slaughter of baby seals in Canada anyone

will ever have to witness. An important strategy to

ending the hunt is closing down the global markets for

seal products. Countries such as Greenland, Mexico,

and Italy have taken steps to ban the import of

sealskins.

 

" When countries stop buying sealskins, there will be

no reason for sealers to kill the seals. We are asking

every single country to please, please stop buying

seal products so this hunt will stop. We're proposing

a fair solution to all of this - a sealing licence

buy-back plan.

 

" This is a win-win solution: fishermen would be

compensated for any lost revenue when the hunt is

closed, and Canada would have a graceful way to put an

end to a cruel and needless practice that should have

been stopped many years ago. "

 

________________

 

# TO register your support for the IF AW campaign

against seal hunting, visit their website at

www.stopthesealhunt.co.uk