[LINK] "Seal cull on Sable would cost $35 million"

[rfmcdonald]

Just last week I blogged about plans to make Sable Island, a giant sand dune located in the North Atlantic Ocean off the Nova Scotian coast, into a national park, so as to protect the unique and fragile environment. Just yesterday I learned massive seal cull.

The windswept beaches of Sable Island would become a scene of slaughter if the federal government adopts the results of a study that explores in chilling detail how 220,000 of the island’s grey seals could be exterminated over five years.

The 2009 feasibility study, compiled for the federal Fisheries Department, says the first year of a proposed cull would target 100,000 seals, requiring a team of 20 specially trained hunters with silenced rifles to kill 4,000 seals per day during the dead of winter.

"At this production rate, a tandem dump truck would be filled with seals approximately every 10 minutes — seven hours per day for 25 days," says the 68-page study, drafted by engineering consultants at Halifax-based CBCL Ltd.

The hunters' rifles would be equipped with silencers to avoid spooking the herd, the report says. Since silencers are a prohibited device in Canada, the federal government would be required to get a special permit to import them from the United States.

[. . .]

The slaughtered seals, some of them weighing more than 350 kilograms, would then be grabbed by one of 30 modified heavy loaders and carried to portable incinerators at five work camps set up across the island.

Why this industrialized slaughter? Supporting the seal industry and protecting the cod are cited. As you might expect, the evidence that the seals are decimating cod stocks is rather weak.

Nova Scotia's fisheries minister, Sterling Belliveau, says the province's NDP government is not opposed to a cull on the island, which is destined to become a national park.

"That's a federal issue but I can assure that we have always appreciated the traditional hunting methods of a humane hunt and will continue to support the seal industry," he said.

"I would point out that there is hunting and different activities that goes on in other national parks."

While many Canadians regard Sable Island as a wild and unspoiled oasis worthy of park status, commercial fishermen in Nova Scotia see the island very differently.

They say the grey seals that frequent the island are responsible for eating too many commercially valuable fish, particularly cod. The seals are also blamed for ruining many of the fish that are left by leaving them infected with parasites called sealworms.

"A important industry in the region believes that there is a problem," the study says, noting that the east coast grey seal population has grown from 20,000 animals in the 1970s to more than 300,000 today.

About 80 per cent of all grey seal pups are born on Sable Island, about 300 kilometres southeast of Halifax.

I can only imagine the international reaction.