Is the seal hunt sustainable?
Scientists agree that current kill levels are not sustainable. A recent study by Stephen Harris, a professor at Bristol University in the UK, asserts that the Canadian management regime for harp seals does not apply a precautionary principle and threatens the survival of seal populations. (The report is available on www.protectseals.org.) Over the past 10 years, between one-third and one-half of all seal pups have been slaughtered by commercial sealers. Because seals only reach breeding age at 6 years, the impacts of high hunting levels are only starting to be felt. Under the current management plan, by the time the Canadian government decides to take action to save the population, it may be too late to intervene. Today’s kill levels meet and even exceed those of the 1950s and 1960s, when over-hunting quickly reduced the harp seal population by nearly two-thirds.
Department of Fisheries and Oceans defined a sustainable seal hunt as one that did not cause the seal population to decline from one year to the next. Today, the government’s management plan is actually designed to reduce the population. Quotas are intentionally set above the government’s estimated replacement yield in order to reduce the size of the seal population. In short, the current management plan is not even intended to achieve the government’s own definition of a sustainable hunt.
