Open Letter to Nahas Angula Prime Minister and People of Namibia

 nangula@opm.gov.na

Permission to Publish, Copy and Paste

Dear Prime Minister, Nahas Angula and the good people of Namibia,

The largest slaughter of wildlife mammals in Africa is now being slaughtered by Namibians in Namibia. The least human populated country on earth. Namibia’s seal hunt is the second largest in the world and the only country killing nursing baby seal pups commercially.

The sealing quota this year, for these endangered listed Cape fur seals is 86 000. Namibian sealing regulations and pup quota awards 4 seal rights holders the right to club 80 000 seal pups <1 year old, who must then be clubbed on the head with a wooden pick-axe until death.

It is immensely cruel.

Throughout the civilized world it is considered a criminal and punishable offence to beat or club an animal to death.

The Animal Protection Act’s of the world dating back to 1962 say so. US Government banned specifically Cape fur seal imports in 1972 due to its cruelty. Two US independent veterinarians judged that the sealing on two mainland seal colonies did not attain the standard of humaneness required by the US Department of Commerce in 1974. US Appeal court in 1977 invalidated any previous hardship economic waivers, as well. The EU banned nursing baby seal imports in 1983 and in 1987, Canada, Greenland, Russia and Norway banned in their own regulations the clubbing or killing of nursing baby seals in breeding grounds. South Africa ending its commercial sealing in 1990.

Yet, since your independence in 1990, Namibia has continue to award sealing quotas to 4 sealing rights holders, and awarded them quotas which are 90%, nursing seal pup based. There is no dispute that these pups at 7-8 months of age when herded together and clubbed to death, are nursing baby seals. The Namibian government earned 206,000 Namibian dollars from sealing last year.

Prior to independence in 1989, your seal population on the three sealing colonies of Wolf/Atlas Bay in the diamond restricted area and Cape Cross in the Seal Reserve numbered 122, 018 seal pups born in December, to which you clubbed to death 6,285. 17 years later, these colonies produced 121, 462 seal pups.

You all have seen the dead seal pups on the beaches over the years, scientifically this natural mortality has averaged since 1972 at 44% of the pups born. Subtracting this, would leave 68 000 seal pups alive, facing a seal pup quota of 80 000.

Whilst the seal population has not increased in 17 years, your sealing pup quota has increased 1,172% since independence, from 6,285 pups to 80 000.

This is a serious and direct threat to the future survival of this United Nations - Convention In Trade of Endangered Appendix II Species, as listed in 1977.

Your largest seal colony at Cape Cross, to which attracts over 70 000 visitors each year, who contributes over 2 million Namibian dollars to your economy, completely collapsed on 10 August, last year, with not a single seal left in the colony. Likewise the largest employer and contributor to your economy De Beers, has publicly written its disproval of seal culling.

Between the 16-23 July 2008, 27-member countries of the EU will vote to ban Cape fur seal products being imported into the EU, as Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Italy have already done.

These bans are not Animal Rights Movement petitions or campaigns - these bans are world super-power, big government’s government bans since the 1970s.

These bans are based on one thing - seal cruelty.

I invite you to log onto the on-line petition I recently set-up called the Declaration for the Protection of Cape Fur Seals  http://www.petitiononline.com/DPCFS/petition.html, from which you will see various comments, country, occupation and age. We range in age from 13 to 70, from all walks of life, we are not all, just bunny-huggers or tree-huggers with nothing to do. What we all have in common is a deep concern for your environment, and ours.

I could debate endlessly with the Right Honourable Nahas Angula or his Minister’s about seal populations, quotas, mass die-off’s, natural mortalities, sealing methods, extinct seal colonies on and on, or whether seals eat too much fish or should be culled.

No matter what is said on radio, television, in documentaries, in newspapers, in reports, in meetings or the internet - the thing that cannot be changed is that it is cruel.

You know it, I know it, the world knows it and Namibia knows it.

It was cruel in 1902, in 1972, in 1990 and it is just as cruel in 2008, but far larger.

Namibian’s do not eat fish and export 97% for profit, likewise do Namibian’s not eat seal meat, or have any need to wear their skins, teeth or bones, use their oil or use the seals sexual organs to reproduce. Namibia and Namibians have therefore no valid reason to kill seals.

Claiming no other alternative method for killing baby seals - is not a valid legal defence for a national policy of the criminal act of animal cruelty.

If you were too as a country or as a Prime Minister, to announce the end to seal clubbing. We will note rub your noses in it, but instead we will commend you, support you and rejoice, and do whatever is in our humble power to help you and your good people to prosper and grow your beautiful country.

Please announce an end to sealing.

Below are the sequential dates recorded of this seal cruelty.



For the Seals

Francois Hugo Seal Alert-SA