Just when you thought seal hunting season was over

[LeftyMom]

http://www.seashepherd.org/news/media_060703_1.html

Since the 14th Century, the slaughter of these baby Cape fur seals still nursing on mothers milk has continued year after year. The current Namibian seal slaughter of 60,000 baby seals and 7,000 bulls is the second largest seal harvest in the world. An intensive investigation by Seal Alert-SA over the past several years has pieced together a number of issues, that with you help, TODAY – could help end this slaughter finally.

Sealing used to be conducted exclusively on islands, but as the seal numbers became depleted from sealing by 1900, seals fled to the desert mainland in northern South Africa and Namibia. From 1940, sealing activity moved to the mainland because it was easier to round up and club these baby seals to death. Within 30 years, mainland colonies were growing after sealing at over 400%. The reason for this is that because females were exempt, as no market existed and mostly the larger male pups were taken in the harvest, creating an unnatural increased female breeding population. This human-induced population imbalance was turned against the seals and the harvests turned to purely culling exercises to reduce the population that humans continued to cause through sealing.

In 1972, the US enacted the US Marine Mammal Protection Act in which it banned the taking of seal pups still nursing. 60% of the pups were born on farms belonging to De Beers Diamond mining company. South Africa, which was exporting all its skins at the time to the US, became the only country in the world to challenge this act. In 1977, the US Appeal Court upheld the banning of Cape fur seal imports. This should have ended the sealing industry in southern Africa. Instead it was not until 1990, that South Africa ended sealing.

In 1990, Namibia also became independent, and by this stage 75% of the seal pups were being born on the mainland. Once again 60% of these pups were being born in the diamond restricted area, known as the sperrgebiet, controlled by De Beers. Sealing in Namibia is undertaken by only two concession holders on two mainland colonies where 75% of the seal pup population is born. Less than 160 part-time unskilled migrant workers are employed for a few months. For the year 2000, the income from 42,000 pups killed was just $85,000 or less than $3 a seal. The sealing quota is divided between these two concession holders, one at Cape Cross (a nature reserve) and the other Wolf/Atlas Bay (diamond restricted area). Since 1990, the seals in these colonies have experienced two mass die-off's from starvation, due to overfishing, where one third to one half of the population starved to death. (continued at link, with contact information)