Seal killing continues despite ban

Press, 13 March 1982, Page 1

Seal killing continues despite ban

NZPA-Reuter Ottawa Canada say's that West European calls for a ban on sealskin imports will not stop the controversial annual , seal hunt which began yes- ‘ terday. ■ “This is not the end of the seal hunt. We may have lost this battle in part-but- we have not lost the war,” said the Canadian Minister of Fisheries, Mr Romeo Leblanc, after the European Parliament voted in Strasbourg yesterday in favour of a ban. The Parliament’s resolution was passed by 160 votes to 10. This year’s hunt, in which 186,000 seals will be clubbed to death under Government supervision for their skin, oil, and . flesh, is now under way on Canada’s east coast ice floes. Although the resolution condemns the hunt, it recognises the dependence of the Eskimo population on seals for food and income, and it suggests special provision to exempt them from any ban.' Canada was confident of averting a binding ban by the 10 States of the European Economic Community and he refused- to talk of retaliation against the valuable fishing, in Canadian-.'waters enjoyed by E.E.C. trawlers. Off Newfoundland, nine big sealing vessels, three from Norway and six from Canada, waited to start killing

harp seal pups at dawn when the main hunt was due to begin among a 500,000-strong herd. Off the Magdalen Islands in the St Lawrence Gulf, where more than 10,000 seals, have been killed this week, the Greenpeace conservation movement planned to start protest action that has been delayed by thick ice and bad weather. A four-man protest team plans to go on to the ice floes and shield the pups from hunters or spray the animals green to make their skins worthless. The director of Greenpeace, Mr Patrick Moore, leading the protest expedition from the ship Rainbow Warrior, was delighted by the European vote. “There is an overwhelming feeling' of joy aboard the boat,” he radioed to shore.A Greenpeace spokesman, Mr Peter Dykstra, said the vote did not mean an end to the'hunt but said it was "the single most important thing that could have happened.” In St John’s, people who see the seal hunt as a cen-turies-old source of income for fishermen were bitter. In Ottawa, Mr Leblanc said a ban on sealskin imports would be like Canada’s banning pate de foie gras from France because, it objected to force-feeding of geese.