SCIENTISTS WARN EXTENDED HUNTING AND LACK OF ICE THREATENS SEAL POPULATION

[Omaha Steve]

http://environment-center.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientists-warn-extended-hunting-and.html

SCIENTISTS WARN EXTENDED HUNTING AND LACK OF ICE THREATENS SEAL POPULATION

Author: Robert Strong

The International Fund for Animal Welfare urges the new federal conservative government of Canada to act with caution and scrap this year's commercial harp seal hunt practiced in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on the coast of Newfoundland if there is no ice for seals to give birth.

Harp seals in point of fact rely on stable ice platform to give birth to their pups and successfully care for them. So when there is thin ice, the normal pupping and nursing are put at risk and large numbers of pups could die. This fact was made known by Dr. David Lavigne, an international marine expert from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who has studied harp seals and their behaviors for the past 30 years. He added, ""The combination of a lack of ice and a seal hunt could result in the loss of almost all of this year's pups born in the Gulf and, possibly, on the Front, as well.""

In February and March, there is a prediction of continued above-normal temperatures and little or no ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where hundreds of thousands of seal pups are born yearly by mid-March. The government scientists of Canada has put into record incidents of three-quarters of pups that died as a consequence of bad ice conditions. The same incident took place in 1998 and 2000, where an estimated one-quarter of the pups died due to lack of ice.

The appeal now is: No ice, no hunt.

FULL story at link above.