Canadian fishermen have been granted a slight increase in the number of harp seals they will be allowed to kill this year, the government announced. Animal welfare groups condemned the decision.
The total allowable catch has been set at 275,000 seals, up from 270,000 last year. The allowable catch was 335,000 two years ago, but poor ice conditions led to the change last year. Seventy percent of the seals will be taken in an area off Newfoundland's north coast known as the Front, while 30 percent will be taken in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
"The seal hunt is an economic mainstay for numerous rural communities in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and the North," Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn said in a statement Monday.
But animal rights groups quickly criticized this year's quota.
"Quite frankly, I'm stunned," Sheryl Fink, a senior researcher with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said in a statement. "There is absolutely no way this increase in quota can possibly be justified. The science doesn't support it, the markets can't support it, and the Canadian public won't support it."
Fishermen sell seal pelts mostly for the fashion industry in Norway, Russia and China, as well as blubber for oil, earning about 78 U.S. dollars per seal.
The Canadian government and isolated fishing communities say they need the supplemental income because cod stocks have dwindled. The slaughter of some 335,000 seals in 2006 brought about 25 million dollars.
The United States has banned Canadian seal products since 1972 and the European Union banned the white pelts of baby seals in 1983.
Source: Xinhua/Agencies
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