By Eleanor Momberg and Tabby Moyo
Windhoek - More than 60 000 seals are being culled in Namibia, sparking an international outcry from conservation bodies and animal rights activists, which have called the hunt genocide.
The killing of 60 000 Cape fur cub seals and 7 000 bulls until November is the second largest seal harvest in the world. The largest annual harvest is in the Gulf of St Lawrence in Canada, where 325 000 were culled this year.
Namibia's fishing and marine resources ministry has justified its cull arguing the proliferation of seals poses a serious threat to the fishing industry, one of the country's major foreign currency earners and a creator of jobs, saying the high number of seals was depleting fishing stocks.
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'Vehemently' opposed to the cull "It is pure genocide what is going on up there," said Seal Alert SA's Francois Hugo, pointing out that the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species had also questioned how the Namibians could have exported 112 000 seal skins in 2002 when permits were issued for only 60 000.
It is estimated that there are between 800 000 and one million seals along the Namibian coast, and around two million along the South. The Canadian seal population is estimated at between five and six million.
Animal rights activist were also opposed to the brutal method used to kill seals - clubbing of seal pups and the shooting of adults. Adult bulls are killed for their genitalia, sold in the Far East as an aphrodisiac. Fur coats, gloves and handbags are made from the pelts, and seal oil and carcass meal.
Hugo said culling of cubs and males had started at the Cape Cross colony on July 1, while culling at Atlas Bay was postponed. The sealing quota in Namibia is shared between only two concession holders on two mainland colonies, Cape Cross and Atlas Bay, where 75 percent of the seal population is born.
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