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. These concessions expire at the end of 2007.
South Africa stopped seal harvesting 1990.
Cubs were not a threat to the fishing industry or population, said Hugo.
"The crazy thing is that for the last 100 years they have been culling seals, except females and this caused an imbalance in the population.
"There has been an unnatural increase in the number of females and that is why the numbers are growing. Seals left on off-shore islands do not show growth in population."
If seals were dying from starvation it meant that over-fishing was the cause, he said. "We have created this man-made mess. It does not benefit anybody. It is only responsible for 0,01 percent of Namibia's GDP annually, and creates part-time work for only 160 people annually."
Hugo has garnered the support of De Beers against this year's cull.
In a letter to Seal Alert SA, De Beers said it would raise with the Namibian government the views of the international community, environmental organisations and concerned global citizens with regard to the seal populations of Namibia.
The Wildlife Society of Namibia challenged its government to provide data that seals were indeed depleting the fish stocks.
"The society queries the whereabouts of the scientific data (if any) which proves that the large number of seals living off our coastline are negatively affecting the fishing industry," it said.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare said they were "vehemently" opposed to the cull.
"It is unacceptably cruel to cull seals," Ifaw said.
- This article was originally published on page 1 of Sunday Argus on July 09, 2006
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