www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3542189.ece
·
PRINT THIS PAGE
From
The Times
March
13, 2008
Archangel bloody seal
pup cull halted
The
blood of baby seals stains the snow red during the traditional cull
in the Archangel region of northern Russia each March. But the
slaughter of thousands of seals, many only a few days old, has been
halted this year amid protests by celebrities and environmental
groups, and calls for hunting to be outlawed.
Officials
in Archangel insisted that the cull had been cancelled to protect
the hunters, not the seals, because ice sheets close to the White
Sea were too thin to walk on.
The
decision, however, came at a time of heightened protests by animal
rights groups. Russian television broadcast a demonstration in
Archangel by a group of celebrities and prominent journalists
against the practice.
Hunters
were shown clubbing baby seals with ice picks, leaving them to
bleed to death before they were skinned for their white fur. One
report showed a seal struggling for life in icy water surrounded by
its own blood.
“They
are very much like human babies - they cry and call for their mum
the same way,” one protester, Laima Vaikule, a Latvian pop singer,
said. Viktor Gusev, a sports commentator who was also protesting,
said: “I am sure that there is need for a serious draft law to put
an end to those killings.”
About
335,000 people have signed a petition against the hunting of baby
seals, according to Oleg Mitvol, the powerful deputy chief of the
Russian environmental monitoring agency. It noted that the killing
of the youngest seals, known as whitecoats, “is authorised only in
Russia”.
Annual
quotas allow up to 35,000 baby seals to be killed in the White Sea
during ten days in March, according to the State Committee for
Fisheries. Sergei Tarasov, deputy chief of the regional committee
in Archangel, told
The Times:
“If the ice was harder then of course there would be a hunt, but
the ice is too weak and it's too dangerous for people. I myself
went out in a helicopter to check it.”
But
a spokeswoman for Nikolai Kiselyov, the Governor of Archangel, said
that the regional administration was seeking to end the cull. She
said: “We have asked the state committee to work on legislation to
ban this trade for humanitarian reasons.” The ban has angered local
villagers, or Pomors, who claim that the trade is vital to their
survival. Pavel Osipov, the leader of one community, said that it
posed “a serious threat to the centuries-old Pomor fishing
tradition”.
Fur
coats remain de rigueur for most Russian women and there is no
stigma attached to wearing one. Environmental activism is in its
infancy, although public outrage at the risk of pollution from a
planned oil pipeline within 800 metres of Lake Baikal prompted
President Putin to order last-minute changes to the route in
2006.
Mr
Putin vetoed legislation in 2000 that would have banned seal
hunting despite a 273-1 vote in favour in parliament. Russia has a
strong tradition of hunting for sport and attempts to curb it would
be politically unpopular.