La chasse aux bébés phoques Gris est terminée

[Animal 0]

Interesting that they do not mentioned that a representative of the Atlantic Canadian Anti-sealing coalition - group based in Halifax - was at some point on the island during the massacre of the seals...


http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Front/9005649.html

Controversial C.B. seal hunt over

By TERA CAMUS Cape Breton Bureau
Fri. Feb 22 - 6:53 PM


Pat Briand surveys one seal while another is hauled out of the Little Kaitlynn after the first ever hunt on Hay Island, a protected wilderness area off Main-a-Dieu in Cape Breton. (TERA CAMUS / Cape Breton Bureau)



MAIN-A-DIEU — The first ever seal hunt on Hay Island is over.
Dingwall fisherman Pat Briand told The Chronicle Herald he and the 15-member crew of the Little Kaitlan won’t be returning to the provincially protected wilderness area this year even though the quota isn’t filled and the season doesn’t officially end until mid-March.

Fishermen managed to harvest only about 1,200 of the 2,500 allowable catch in the experimental hunt and now seals are too old.

“She’s all done,” he said as the harvest was offloaded in Main-a-Dieu. “The seals’ (fur) has molted.”

The cull of six- to eight-week-old grey seals, each weighing about 45 kilograms, was approved earlier this year by the provincial government, and supervised by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the provincial Natural Resources Department and the RCMP.

The tiny island is part of the Scatarie Island protected wilderness area and is about two kilometres off this Cape Breton County community. The provincial Fisheries and Aquaculture Department requested the cull as a way to protect the ecologically sensitive island’s fish stocks.

“We looked carefully at all the available information, including local knowledge and industry experience,” Minister Ron Chisholm said in a release earlier this month when the cull opened.

Three national and international anti-sealing groups — none of which were from Nova Scotia — documented the first and Thursday’s hunt for use in public campaigns to protest the Canadian seal hunt one described in a recent interview as “brutal.”

Mr. Briand believes the reason no locals protest the hunt is that many have family and friends working in the fishing industry and know the damage young seals can do when eating ground fish and shellfish. The seals can eventually become the size of small cars, weighting a tonne apiece.

“I think locals understand that if something isn’t done with this overpopulation of seals that fish plants will be closing everywhere and we’re not using that as an excuse,” Mr. Briand said.

“We see it happening now.”

Capt. Robert Courtney, who headed the crew, said government now estimates a 12 per cent growth rate annually in the seal population.

“They know it’s expanding at an alarming rate,” he said while en route to Montreal for an industry meeting.

“These international groups film ... to raise money for their organizations. Why don’t they take pictures of the 1,000-pound grey seals on that island and show the public how big they grow? They don’t. You’ll never see that.”

Mr. Courtney, who said the hunt is no uglier than slaughterhouses for beef, pig and chickens, was headed to a day-long industry meeting to discuss the newly required three-step process to kill seals legally and humanely, something activists say isn’t possible.

Rebecca Aldworth, spokeswoman for The Humane Society of the United States, said in a recent interview that clubbing and bullets to kill animals for fur isn’t humane. Often animals are only stunned when hit.

“There is not a shred of credible evidence on the planet to suggest that grey seals are negatively impacting any fish stock,” Ms. Aldworth said.

“Hay Island is a very important ecological site which the seals are part of.”

No incidents were reported between the sealers and anti-sealers during the hunt.

Activists were kept farther away on Thursday than they were on opening day when a loophole in an injunction allowed them closer access. That loophole was closed with an amendment in the regulation Thursday in Ottawa, according to the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

[animo-aequoanimo 0]

Citation :

Interesting that they do not mentioned that a representative of the Atlantic Canadian Anti-sealing coalition - group based in Halifax - was at some point on the island during the massacre of the seals...

Je ne comprend pas, Do. De qui parlent-ils ???

[Animal 0]

Celui qui a écrit ce commentaire est celui qui a posté cette nouvelle sur une liste... Ça ne fait pas partie de l'article Cé.

Il dit qu'il trouve bizarre que ça ne soit pas mentionné dans l'article qu'il y avait une personne de la Coalition anti-chasse (cette coalition qui se trouve à Halifax) présente sur les lieux de cette chasse au phoque Gris...

voir le site de cette coalition, dont nous faisons partie en tant que supporters hihihihih
http://www.antisealingcoalition.ca/
http://www.antisealingcoalition.ca/supporters.php

[animo-aequoanimo 0]

Ah ! Ok, merci, Do.

[Animal 0]

Anti-sealers threaten to sue N.S.

(comments can be posted online below the article)

Anti-sealers threaten to sue N.S.

By AMY SMITH Provincial Reporter
Mon. Feb 25 - 1:55 PM




Animal rights groups have threatened to sue the Nova Scotia government to prevent another grey seal hunt such as the one that concluded last week off Cape Breton.
(ANDRE MASLENNIKOV / Rex Features)



The director of an animal rights groups says the seal hunt in one of Nova Scotia’s protected wilderness areas this month was “the most brutal” she’s ever witnessed.

And now the Humane Society International Canada is considering taking the province to court over the recent hunt on Hay Island off Cape Breton.

“The decision to turn this provincial park, this unique ecological site into an open-air slaughterhouse was a betrayal of every citizen of Nova Scotia,” Rebecca Aldworth, the group’s director of animal programs, said at a Halifax news conference Monday.

She said they believe there are “likely violations” of the Wilderness Areas Protection Act. Ms. Aldworth hopes possible legal action and public pressure will ensure the hunt on Hay Island, about two kilometres off the coast of Main-a-Dieu in Cape Breton, never happens again. It is part of the Scatarie Island protected wilderness area.

Earlier this month, Environment Minister Mark Parent said he allowed the hunt under a section of the act that says he can permit otherwise prohibited activities “for the responsible management, preservation or restoration of indigenous biodiversity of a wilderness area.”

He said government lawyers told him he had the authority to permit the hunt without having to change the legislation.

Capt. Robert Courtney, a sealer for more than two decades, said the hunt was humane and done by the book. He said the sealers were monitored by both the federal Department of Fisheries and provincial Department of Natural Resources.

When asked how he felt about the humane society’s description of the hunt as cruel, Mr. Courtney said: “Welcome to the real world, as far as I’m concerned, because killing of anything is cruel.

“I’m sure if they went to Iraq they’d probably see a lot crueller stuff than what they seen there with human beings.”

He said there need to be more seal harvests in order to stop growing herds, which he said are expanding at a rate of 12 per cent a year.

“There is a need for expansion because taking 1,200 animals ain’t going to bring it in check,” Mr. Courtney said. “By saving the seals, what are you doing? You are throwing the ecosystem out of balance.”

He said what occurred on Hay Island was a limited, controlled harvest, not a cull, which he said is just killing for the sake of killing. Mr. Courtney said there is a market for the pelts, although it has dropped to about $20 each this year, from $105 two years ago.

During the news conference, Ms. Aldworth and Bridget Curran with the Atlantic Canada Anti-Sealing Coalition showed footage of men banging wooden sticks to herd the seals together, hitting the animals over the head with sticks and then slicing them open with box cutters. One photo showed a white coat pup, too young to harvest, with blood on his underside. Another pup was huddled next to a dead seal.

“They were being killed just inches away from the newborn seals and their mothers and the mothers were trying to defend the pups by putting themselves and the pups. It was heartbreaking to witness,” Ms. Aldworth said.

“Grey seals actually have quite thick skulls so the use of wooden bats to stun them is absolutely unacceptable. I saw seals that were literally moving their tails and flippers as they were being sliced open with box cutters.”
Ms. Aldworth said there is no evidence that culling grey seals will help fish stocks recover.

“If it was actually meant to be a cull, you would be targeting adult females, not juvenile pups,” she said.

“This was a hunt for fur and it was a hunt that fisherman wanted because they want to sell those skins.”


http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Front/9005672.html

[Animal 0]

Sable Island seal cull sought



By BRIAN MEDEL Yarmouth Bureau
Wed. Feb 27 - 5:42 AM

YARMOUTH — What Nova Scotia needs is an all-out harvest of adult grey seals on Sable Island, say fishing industry insiders.

This month’s brief grey seal harvest on Hay Island was government-approved and provided some off-season employment for Cape Breton fishermen but didn’t do anything to relieve the problems caused by the seals, they say.

"We need to reduce the Sable Island herd," said Denny Morrow of the Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association.

The industry supports a plan to reduce the herd to half its current population over five years.

"That . . . would still make it, I think, the biggest grey seal herd in the world," Mr. Morrow said Tuesday.

Fish processing plants are reporting an increasing incidence of seal worm parasites in the vital organs of cod, haddock, flounder and halibut, he said, and scientists are investigating whether fish are dying from the parasites.

The grey seal herd has grown from about 30,000 to over 300,000, Mr. Morrow said.

Fishermen have also reported changes in fish behaviour that they attribute to grey seals.

"You don’t see fish coming in to shallow inshore waters any more" where the seals come ashore, he said.

Many fishermen believe seals are chasing cod from spawning banks, which is disrupting reproduction.

Cod from a diminishing stock that migrates out from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to open ocean wintering grounds pass by Hay Island, said Mr. Morrow.

"It’s a lunch for the grey seals."

John Levy is a Lunenburg County fisherman and president of the Grey Seal Society, a working group trying to bring about a successful harvest.

The hunt on Hay Island, about two kilometres off the coast of Main-a-Dieu in Cape Breton, was late starting, he said, explaining why only 1,200 animals were taken when the quota was 2,500.

Juvenile grey-coated seals, not white-coated pups, were sought.

Many of the seals had already entered the water, though, he said.

"There were about 4,000 pups born on that island this past winter," Mr. Levy said, referring to scientific estimates provided to fishermen.

Hay Island has been a breeding ground for a little more than a decade, he said, but the island is so small that its ecology is being destroyed by the grey seals that are crawling all over it.

Mr. Levy fishes lobster and groundfish from his home port of Chester.

He said grey seals are everywhere now, biting the bellies out of fish already hooked on long lines and even devouring undersized lobsters tossed back as a conservation measure.

"So much for conservation," he said.

This month he was on Hay Island for the harvest and said reports of mother grey seals attempting to protect their young by placing themselves between babies and sealers were not true.

"There were only about five adult seals," he said, and they were not in among the juveniles.

Rebecca Aldworth of Humane Society International Canada said mothers, newborns and moulted seals were together in groups.

"There were lots of mothers on that island," she said. "I didn’t stop and count them because it was all moving quite quickly."

Photographs taken from their Feb. 9 visit to the island clearly show mother seals, white-coated pups and larger, juvenile seals, said Ms. Aldworth.

No one has offered any scientific proof that grey seals are damaging the ecology of Hay Island, those opposed to the seal hunt say.

On Tuesday, Ms. Aldworth said the anti-sealing group’s point is not about suing the province or taking government to court.

It wants a court to review the decision to open Hay Island to sealing with a view to closing it to future hunts, she said.

The provincial Fisheries Department requested the cull on the tiny island, part of the Scatarie Island protected wilderness area, to protect fish stocks around the ecologically sensitive island.


http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1040512.html

[Animal 0]

Chasse au phoque: L'île de Sable dans le collimateur
2008-02-28




L'industrie des pêches en Nouvelle-Écosse souhaite réduire la population de phoques sur cette île de l'Atlantique, mais plusieurs obstacles se dressent devant elle.




Des représentants de l'industrie des pêches en Nouvelle-Écosse essayent de convaincre le ministre fédéral des Pêches et des Océans de permettre une chasse au phoque sur l'île de Sable.

Denny Morrow, délégué de l'association des transformateurs de poisson de la Nouvelle-Écosse, a abordé la question avec le ministre Loyola Hearn, il y a deux semaines.

La population de phoques gris connaît une forte croissance à l'île de Sable depuis la fin des années 1970. Le troupeau, qui comptait 20 000 bêtes à l'époque, s'élève maintenant à plus de 250 000.

Les pêcheurs croient que ces phoques sont responsables de la chute des stocks de poissons de fond. Les phoques causent d'autres problèmes aux transformateurs de poissons, comme Claude d'Entremont, à Pubnico.

« On a des parasites dans les phoques qui viennent dans le poisson et qui nous causent des problèmes. Il faut les enlever. Ça nous coûte beaucoup plus cher », affirme M. d'Entremont.

Claude d'Entremont croit qu'une chasse annuelle à l'île de Sable permettrait de réduire de moitié la population de phoques gris et de créer du travail. « On peut développer une industrie. Les pêches ne sont pas si bonnes que ça », dit-il.

Cependant, l'accès des chasseurs à l'île de Sable, reconnue pour ses troupeaux de chevaux sauvages et sa beauté naturelle, s'annonce difficile. « C'est isolé, c'est loin et ça prend des ressources pour se rendre là. Aussi, il y a des espèces en périls là », explique le garde-côte Tim Surette.

De plus, les animalistes s'opposent farouchement à cette chasse. Les pêcheurs auront donc de la difficulté à convaincre Ottawa de permettre une chasse au phoque sur cette île.

http://nouvelles.sympatico.msn