Opposition to seal ban grows within EU, where hunters alliance is optimistic rules will change

A group representing hunters in the Nordic countries says it's more optimistic than ever that the European Union will lift a longtime ban on trading seal products.

The regulation, implemented in 2009 after a highly successful campaign from animal rights groups, deprived Canadian sealers of their primary market.

"Our hope and expectation is that the ban will be reversed and that trade can be possible again," said Johan Svalby, senior advisor for international affairs at the Nordic Hunters' Alliance.

Last May, the European Commission launched a formal review of the ban, called a "fitness check."

While the commission regularly reviews its regulations, "we have a sense this time that the commission is serious in its initiative to look into the consequences of the ban," Svalby said.

Growing concerns in Baltic region

The review process is taking place as a growing number of EU countries bordering the Baltic Sea worry about the effect the region's steadily increasing seal population could be having on fish stocks. 

Last month, Sweden sent the commission a letter requesting the 27-member bloc loosen its rules on trading seal products, given that managing the region's seal population relies on hunters who currently have no market for their meat and pelts. 

"There has been a sharp increase in these species in the Baltic Sea, and this is endangering the recovery of certain fish stocks that are important for coastal fisheries", said Peter Kullgren, the Swedish rural affairs minister, during a meeting of European agriculture and fisheries ministers in Luxemburg on Oct. 21.

Finland, Estonia and Latvia support the Swedish proposal to manage grey and ringed seals. All four countries are concerned about the fish the predators consume in the Baltic and the damage they cause to fishing equipment.

"There's a lot of angry fishermen around here", said Jouni Heinikoski, a former hunter and fish harvester in northern Finland, earlier this year. "Because the seal population is so high nowadays, you cannot use gill nets anymore and salmon traps has to be made by special nylon."

Ethical dilemma

Sven-Gunnar Lunneryd, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, said some scientists believe that fish stock recovery in the Baltic depends on culling large numbers of seals.

"We have to decrease them and somebody is going to decrease them and that's the hunters", he told CBC News in July. "It's not an easy task.… There needs to be some economic compensation to the hunters."

Svalby, with the Nordic Hunters Alliance, said that while seal quotas are much smaller in Europe than in Canada, "we fill approximately half of the quotas that we have in Sweden and Finland."

Lunneryd added that allowing a seal hunting while banning the sale of seal products goes against sustainable hunting practices. 

"Should I throw the dead seals in the sea? No, it's completely unethical," he said.

Thousands take part in consultations

Since beginning its review of the current regulations, thousands of individuals and organizations have participated in consultations, including the Canadian, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavut and Northwest Territories governments, which argued for removing the ban.

Animal rights groups also took part, several of which, including the Humane Society International, support maintaining the ban and described the seal hunt as a "brutal massacre" and "cruel" in their submissions.

"Canada has a clear cynical intention to undermine the ban and resume market access for its cruel products", wrote Jo Swabe, the public affairs director at the Humane Society, in a June op-ed.

"The commission should maintain this legislation unchanged, not only because commercial sealing poses an existential threat to seal populations vulnerable to climate change, but also — as the WTO recognized — that it is in every respect an affront to public morality."

Swabe declined an interview, as did Canada's ambassador to the EU, Ailish Campbell.

Commission report due in January

"The concerns expressed in these consultations will be duly considered," promised EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Janusz Wojciechowski during the Luxemburg ministerial meetings on Oct. 21.

But he said culling seals wouldn't be a panacea for what ails Baltic fisheries.

"Fishery depletion in the Baltic Sea is to a great extent due to the poor environmental status of the Baltic Sea, which clearly affects the profitability of fisheries," said Wojciechowski, adding that the area's lack of oxygen and increasing water pollution were among the "pressures that should be addressed first."

"Predator control only will not control those strong issues," he said.

Oceana, a non-governmental organization that advocates for the protection of marine ecosystems told Brussels-based news website Euractiv last month that depleted fish stocks were the result of "decades of overfishing, pollution and other human activities that have degraded the Baltic Sea ecosystem."

A recent study from the University of Gothenburg also raised questions about existing levels of hunting on seals in Sweden and their long-term sustainability.

The commission will publish a report with the findings of its review in January. 

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