We’re not after Inuit seal hunters, IFAW claims

DWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT – A spokesman for the animal rights group seeking to end Canada’s commercial seal hunt claims that Inuit are not the target of his group’s most recent anti-sealing campaign.

Rick Smith, the manager of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Canada, tried to distance his organization from criticisms leveled at the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada by author Farley Mowat.

In comments published this week in News North, Mowat slammed the national Inuit organization for not publicly opposing the East Coast seal fishery.

“There is a big difference between Inuit using sealskin in the North or locally trading seal skin in the North, and on the other hand Newfoundlanders – or Inuit, for that matter – selling thousands of dollars’ worth penises to China for the aphrodisiac market,” Smith said.

During the commercial seal hunt off the coast of Newfoundland in late 1996, the IFAW videotaped hunters routinely violating Canadian marine mammal regulations by using prohibited weapons such as boat hooks and gaffs to bludgeon their quarry, and by failing to ensure the animals were dead before skinning, bleeding or hooking them.

Hunters were also shown killing male seals for their genitals only, leaving injured seals to suffer and killing pregnant seals – all violations of the marine mammal regulations.

The IFAW subsequently used the video footage to bolster their ongoing international campaign against Canada’s commercial seal hunt. The campaign has included graphic television and print-media advertisements depicting acts of cruelty inflicted on seals during the 1996 hunt.

Subsistence versus commercial hunting

There is concern among Inuit hunters that because many people don’t make the distinction between aboriginal and commercial hunting, the campaign will affect their own markets for seal fur.

Smith says the IFAW and animal activists do make such distinctions, largely on the basis of harvesting methods and cultural differences, but also between what can reasonably be considered subsistence hunting and hunting that is clearly profit-motivated.

In the case of aboriginal communities, Smith acknowledged, making the latter distinction is no easy task.

“It’s sometimes difficult to draw a line, but we’re committed to trying to draw a line fairly,” said Smith, who has been invited to explain IFAW’s position at the next meeting of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in Nuuk, Greenland.

“Local trading or local commerce in sealskin products, under some circumstances, we would not oppose. It’s really this large-scale international trade in seal products that we find problematic.

“The reason we find it problematic is that history is very clear, showing that when you open up large-scale international markets for animal products, you aggravate animal welfare problems and you inevitably deplete animal populations.”

Common ground with Inuit?

The animal rights group, which has been leading the campaign against Canada’s commercial seal hunt for nearly three decades, would welcome the opportunity to explore common ground with the Inuit, Smith added.

The animals rights group maintains that hunting any species of wild animal for profit is biologically unsustainable in the long run. The IFAW argues, furthermore, that cruelty to animals is inevitable when the main object of the hunt is to maximize profits.

“It’s impossible when you’re killing animals that fast to make sure that every animal is killed properly,” Smith says. “It’s also impossible to regulate that sort of large-scale hunting.”

Canada’s commercial seal hunt, which is based in Newfoundland and the Magdalene Islands, is thought to be the largest hunt for marine mammals in the world.

According to official Department of Fisheries and Oceans figures, the number of harp seals harvested during last year’s hunt was just under 260,000. An additional 8,000 hooded seals were reported taken.