| Canadian government maintains seal cull quota!
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The Canadian government has left
unchanged at 275,000 the limit on the number of harp seals that may
be killed in 2001, Fisheries Minister Herb Dhaliwal said Wednesday.
It will be the fifth year running that the annual quota has been
at this level.
Dhaliwal said in a statement that "Given last years low harvest
and the continuing health and abundance of the seal population,
existing management measures will remain in place."
He added that any revision to the current ceiling would come
after he received feedback from a specialist panel created in early
2000.
The minister´s announcement disappointed animal rights groups --
especially the US-based International Fund for Animal Welfare which
has argued that the current harvest levels are reducing the seal
population.
Rick Smith, one of the leaders of the fund´s Canadian branch,
said, "Canada´s refusal to decrease its quota means that management
of its hunt is neither conservation-oriented nor precautionary."
The Canadian government argues that culling is essential in
order to conserve stocks of fish off the coast of Newfoundland,
where seals compete with commercial fisherman for cod.
The harp seal is the most common kind of seal found in the
northern Atlantic, where its current population is estimated at some
5.2 million.
24th December 2000
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