AR-News: MSNBC Story on Seal Hunt, and Online Poll

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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4738584/ Environment 

 
Stewart Cook / IFAW via Getty Images file Canada
counts pelts from huge seal hunt
Hunters get biggest quota ever: 350,000 pups
The International Fund for Animal Welfare took this
photo of a hunter on March 25, during the first of
Canada's two seal hunts. The hunter uses what's called
a hakapick to club the young seal in the Gulf of Saint
Lawrence. 

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 9:57 a.m. ET April  14, 2004
TORONTO - A day after tens of thousands of seal pups
were hunted for their pelts, Canadian wildlife
officials on Wednesday were counting to determine if
hunters had reached their quota.

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As Tuesday's hunt ended, activists called the hunt
inhumane, with some seal pups being skinned alive.

The hunt — carried out with rifles and spears and
reviled by animal rights activists — was held in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence off the coast of Quebec and in
the frozen barrens of the Atlantic Ocean off
Newfoundland.

Hunters were allowed to kill 350,000 young seals this
year, the largest amount since the government
instituted quotas in the 1960s. If that number wasn't
reached Tuesday, the hunt will be extended for another
24 hours.

Wildlife officials said that the harp seal population
is growing at 5.2 million and pelts are garnering
record prices of about $50 each.

Steve Outhouse, a spokesman for Canada’s Department of
Fisheries and Oceans, said wildlife officials were
working with the seal hunters to determine the size of
the hunt. It wasn’t clear when the count would be
publicly announced.

Activists monitoring hunt
Chris Cutter of the International Fund for Animal
Welfare said about 10 protesters from his group, an
organization founded to fight the seal hunt, turned up
for the Gulf hunt. Outhouse said no animal rights
activists attended the more isolated hunt off
Newfoundland.

  
 
• CANADA: Maps, facts and figures 
 
 
Earlier this year, the Humane Society of the United
States took out full-page newspaper ads urging
Americans to cancel trips to Canada and boycott
Canadian products.



	
		
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