- The seal hunt in eastern Canada is inhumane and environmentally
unsustainable, anti-hunt campaigners said. They also argued that rather
than protecting fishing stocks, the cull may reduce the numbers of some
fish.
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- As hunters completed the second day of a hunt in which
320,000 baby harp seals are likely to be shot or clubbed, campaigners said
the Canadian authorities had done insufficient research into the numbers
of the and their potential vulnerability.
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- Phyllis Campbell-McCrae, the Canadian director of the
International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), said the hunt resulted in
"unnecessary suffering" and was unsustainable. "We object
to it on both points," she said yesterday in Charlottetown, Prince
Edward Island, where she has been watching hunters. This year's hunt is
the third consecutive year that hunters have been allowed to take more
than 300,000 animals, which are processed for their pelts.
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- While the hunt accounts for 2.5 per cent of the Canadian
fishing economy, the government and local seal hunters say it provides
money in an economically depressed region.
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- Hunters on places such as the Isles de la Madeleine also
complain that campaigners are usually people from out of town who have
no knowledge of rural life and who rely on emotive images of young seals
being clubbed to death.
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- The hunters and the government also argue that seals
destroy fish stocks. But Dr David Lavigne, a scientific adviser to Ifaw,
said the food chains of the ocean were too complex to make such a simplistic
link. "It [the hunt] actually could be detrimental because harp seals
also eat the predators of cod," he said.
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- ©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=624996
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