Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/canada-seals/

Every March, mother seals off the coast of Newfoundland begin giving birth to their soft, whitecoated pups.

The month also marks the start of the Canadian commercial seal hunt, and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups. Many pups will be shot and clubbed as they try to escape the ice. Seal pups aged three weeks to three months of age are shot with a rifle or killed using a spiked club known as a hakapik. Others will be impaled on metal hooks, dragged across the ice, hoisted onto a bloody boat and beaten to death for their fur.

The seals that survive may face an even greater threat as climate change eliminates what’s left of their habitats.

As the 2022 commercial seal hunt opens, the industry it supports is lagging, with declining social appetite for seal products, unpredictable ice conditions for seals to give birth and ongoing Covid-19 concerns, IFAW reports. Approximately 26,000 seals were reported killed in 2021, with an average value of CAD$27 per seal, less than a third of the CAD$102 per skin sealers could get in 2006.

Europe first voted to ban the import of whitecoat harp seal and blueback hooded seal skins in 1982, leading to a massive drop in demand for the Canadian sealing industry, the CBC reports. Combined with the threat of an IFAW-led boycott of Canadian seafood, the Canadian government followed with a ban on the killing of whitecoat seals, and the sealing industry was nearly non-existent.

These events led to over one million newborn seals being saved from slaughter in the following years, a trend that stalled out in 1990 as the Minister of Fisheries increased the quota for harp seals and introduced subsidies to revive the sealing industry.

More activism followed, pushing Europe to ban all commercial seal products from non-indigenous hunts, IFAW reports. A Russian ban further closed off 90% of the export market for Canadian seal pelts. When challenged by Canada and Norway, the World Trade Organization (WTO) upheld the EU ban, the first dispute settlement on the basis of public moral concerns over animal welfare.

At least 36 countries have enacted international trade bans on seal products across the globe, 27 which are members of the EU.

According to IFAW Canada Campaigns Director Sheryl Fink, “Closing international markets, a lack of demand for seal products, changing climate conditions and perhaps even mistakes made by the sealing industry itself—all have played a part in bringing the commercial seal hunt to a fraction of its former magnitude. It is time to leave Canada’s commercial seal hunt where it belongs—in the past.”

As the Humane Society reports, melting Arctic ice caps and the survival of ice-dependent species such as polar bears is well publicized, but the impact of climate change on sub-Arctic waters, where harp seals reproduce, is much more rapid and dramatic.

Sea ice cover is expected to change slightly from year to year. However, it has been steadily declining in the harp seal habitats off Canada’s east coast.

“Harp seals are highly adapted to their environments, giving birth to just one pup per year, and populations can be significantly and rapidly affected when environmental conditions are unfavorable,” writes Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of Humane Society International/Canada. “Already, harp seal reproduction rates are dropping, and pup mortality is very high in years with poor ice cover. Scientists warn that, as the sea ice continues to diminish, the impacts on the harp seal population will worsen. Yet in recent years, the Canadian government has authorized annual commercial sealing quotas in excess of 400,000, and tens of thousands of seal pups continue to be shot and beaten to death for their fur each spring.”

Help us shut down markets for seal products all over the world and end this slaughter for good. Sign the petition and protect Canada’s seals from slaughter!

Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog