I should’ve written about this sooner because it’s important and it seems to me that not many people know about the Cape Fur seal slaughter every year in Namibia. I’ve written about it before:
I found some news stories about the slaughter. The Independent Online (South Africa) writes that a total of 86,000 seals will be clubbed to death; 80,000 of them pups under a year old.
Francois Hugo of Seal Alert SA “… pointed out that seals were listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. He argued that seal pups were still nursing when they were killed and could thus not be contributing to declining fish stocks. The collapse of the Namibian fishing industry, he said, was due to mismanagement and overfishing.”
Hugo, who met Nahas Angula, Namibia’s prime minister and several other senior government officials in August last year in an attempt to stop the culling, pointed out that Namibia’s annual seal hunting quota comprised largely of seal pups – a quota that could not be met because up to 25 percent of seals born each year died of natural causes.”
Hugo’s new blog is much more updated than his previous Web site, and contains copies of letters that we can send to Namibian authorities. He takes CITES to task for allowing the export of far more seal skins than were allowed to be slaughtered. You’ll find a a petition to sign calling for the protection of Cape Fur seals, and videos of Hugo’s work with rescued seals. I could not, however, find any way to donate to his cause.
If you find some information on other NGOs working to end this slaughter, please leave a comment on this post. So far, I couldn’t find any current information at Sea Shepherd, or HSI, or Harp Seals.org.
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Filed under: animal rights, endangered species | Tagged: cape fur seals, seal slaughter
