Nativity is the route of all evil

Nativity is the route of all evil. You are right this is not a hunt, the baby seals do not even run away. They stand there confused (not stupid) whilst they are beaten to death at 1000 a time. You claim it a cull to protect fisheries, as some master human race conservation plan - absolute nonsense. Firstly nature culls the seal population all the time. Several mass die-offs (the largest in world history since 1994) from starvation from overfishing not seal numbers. Pups are culled by nature in heat, cold, extreme weather, by predators including jackals, sharks and even seabirds. Even the sea, drown 60% of their young. To claim a cull of 1 million baby seals over the next 10 years, who do not eat solids or catch fish and drink mothers milk, will benefit fisheries is as stupid as you can get. The only scientific study on a seal cull/fisheries interaction showed a cull to be negative to that fisheries. In fact, Namibian govt excludes ALL fish eating seals of all age groups from the cull. How is that for evidence of stupidity. Seals were exterminated from islands by sealers, which islands controlled the seal population most effectively. 98% of this habitat is extinct, permanently. Seals fled to the mainland. The only growth of the seal population, from near extinction in 1990, has been on the culling seal colonies, until the collapse of fisheries in Namibia from overfishing, and the mass starvation die-offs thereafter. In 2006, all the pups starved to death and half the adults. The stupid claim, is we kill livestock why not "cute" seals. A farmer raises his animals, feeds them, houses them and then only kills them if there is a market or need. If sealers in Namibia, raised the seals for slaughter, and feed and carried the cost of "farming seals", they would not kill seals, as no market would offer sealers thousands of dollars for the skins, when currently offering $7 a skin. The difference this is wildlife, who belong to all of us and nobody at the same time, when you slaughter over 50% of the species, you change the behaviour and ecology of the species, and this effects the bio-diversity of the environment to catastrophic proportions. For what so that two white concession holders can hire cheap black labour to beat cruelly 85 000 baby seal pups to death, to earn 500 000 dollars for an industry in the desert so someone in China can wear a fur jacket. Pathetic and misinformed to all who naively support this Namibian seal cull.

Francois Hugo