Home arrow Network News arrow Network News arrow Namibia : Ending the 'Business' of Killing Africa's Endangered Seals
Namibia : Ending the 'Business' of Killing Africa's Endangered Seals
n 26th June 2009, Francois Hugo of Seal Alert-SA, a one-man seal rescue organization and leading campaigner to end the Namibian seal cull receives a written offer to buy-out the Namibian Sealing Industry for 14 million US dollars. The offer made by Hatem Yavuz, the Australian based fur buyer, selected to head and lead the contract gives Seal Alert-SA, 5 days to come up with the cash.
 
Francois Hugo of Seal Alert-SA does not have the cash.
 
Seal Alert-SA campaign to pressure Hatem Yavuz fur buying business to publicly denounce future seal skin buying, exposed as Namibia's last seal skin buyer, based in Australian and the sole reason behind the business of culling seal pups, lead to the offer.
 
Namibia is due to start its annual seal cull of 85 000 baby seal pups and 6000 bulls on 1 July.
 
The First and final sentence in the written offer states, "The positive alternative to stop the harvest is to buy all us out ...... the harvest starts next week, and we will not waste our precious time if we feel and see that we are being played with".
 
Seal Alert-SA showed the 40 rescued seal pups at its private facilities in Hout Bay, the contract to save their siblings in Namibia, who after reading approved, and ordered Francois Hugo to make sure the deal includes getting back the 20 000 dead seal skins of their siblings that Hatem Yavuz still has over from his 23 000 seal skin purchase in 2008.
 
Sunday Independent's reporter Eleanor Momberg ran the following story, http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=14&art_id=vn20090628055513504C126571.
 
Seal Alert-SA immediately started an international campaign seeking pledges from supporters for 14 million US dollars as it did not have the cash. It managed to be interviewed live on radio in the US,  http://www.wflendangeredstreamlive.org/namibianseals.html and in China on http://www.suprememastertv.com/. As the Namibian sealers buy-out offer amounts to a blackmail or bounty of $15 on each seals head due to be killed until 2019, it urged supporters to pledge $15 to save the life-time of each seal.
 
In the business of seal killing, the Namibian sealers receive $7 a skin, and the business of ending it, requires $15 a seal earmarked for culling until 2019.
 
Pledges have started pouring in from around the world, and it is clear seal supporters accept that whether they donate funds to an anti-seal hunt campaign, or pay to view seals in the wild, or donate funds to rescue seals, at a time like this, accepts the $15 is a small price to give these seals a life-time and be the first to stop a government seal hunt privately.
 
With one pledge supporter to buy out the sealing industry, stating "How can I contribute to this? I have donated for years and this is the first time I’ve heard anything concrete about stopping the slaughter of seals".
 
In further response, Australian former merchant banker and Australian of the Year, Phil Wollen has personally pledged 1,5 million US dollars, and asks 100 like minded individuals or organizations to join him. Supporters of Seal Alert-SA, are also desperately seeking to contact Cathy Kangas, CEO of PRAI beauty products who in 2006 offered $16 million to the Canadian government to stop their seal hunt and attempts to reach Oprah are continuing. Seal Alert-SA also appeals for assistance from De Beers diamonds, the EU, Netherlands and German governments to provide funding.
 
A reporter from the Namibian newspaper has confirmed that the Ministry has stated the Seal Cull will go ahead on 1 July, this year.
 
The 'business' of killing endangered Cape fur seal pups for their skins is very real. In 2007, the Namibian Ministry confirmed that the industry had invested 560 000 US dollars in two seal processing factories, craft shop and workshop in Namibia, and generated 625 000 US dollar a year in sales, with 25 000 US dollars in revenue going to government. 97 workers were also employed part-time in the industry, in addition a further 60 workers were employed in the Turkish seal processing plant, doing the tanning and the making of the fur jackets, which sells for 5000 Euros each.
 
A lot is at stake, as the Namibian government has granted the sealers, sealing rights to kill a million seal pups until 2019. Generating nett profits to these sealers of half a million US dollars a year, guaranteed for the next ten years, if the seal population does not collapse first.
 
With all non-commercial seal protection attempts failing these seals, with seal skins banned in the US in 1972 due to the cruelty associated with the slaughter, then becoming a protected species in 1973, and then listed by the United Nations - Convention In Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) in 1977,  the race to save the species from the business of killing intensifies. Although South Africa stopped the cull in 1990, Namibia's sealing business has continued to grow. From 9000 skins to 85 000 pup skin quotas, with sealers investing millions in the industry and business of killing seals.
 
Support for Seal Alert-SA's conservation efforts lead De Beers diamonds to publicly oppose the seal cull and in support of an EU ban, which lead to Namibia's two largest trading countries, the Netherlands and Germany both introducing legislation banning imports in 2007, which further lead to the 27-country EU declaring a full seal product import ban in May this year, citing once again the cruelty involved. Even official appeals by the Dutch Minister of Environment failed to convince Namibian government to stop the seal cull. Francois Hugo's face to face meeting with Namibian Prime Minister equally failed.
 
Namibia's seal cull is now the world's largest, and the first seal cull to take place after the EU ban, what remains to be seen is how the west will respond to protect the seals from the east buying public.
 
Following the EU seal import ban, Namibia's Minister of Fisheries stated, "The EU is not a market of note for us,” Iyambo said in Windhoek, the country’s capital. “It was just an emotional decision. This will have serious repercussions on world trade.” The EU banned the trade because it says clubbing and skinning seals causes unnecessary suffering to the animals. Animal welfare organizations that have opposed the cull in Namibia have failed to advise the government on more humane ways to kill the seals other than clubbing them, the minister said. “We’ve asked them to tell us better ways of killing seals but they all have miserably failed to do so,” Iyambo said. “We are mandated by our constitution to sustainably manage our natural resources so we will continue harvesting seals."
 
Hatem Yavuz group which manufactures the seal skin jackets in Turkey, is equally not concerned about the EU ban, nor Turkey's possible inclusion into the EU in some year's to come, stating he will simply move his factory across the border. Look east, the west is dead with regard to fur, the new buyers are Russia and China, he confirmed, both have a thriving fur market.
 
Days ago, Hatem Yavuz give Seal Alert-SA an undertaking that Namibian sealers would not go out and kill seals for two weeks to allow the contract to be finalized, and would delay the cull, after Seal Alert made it very clear, no seals were to be killed whilst the deal is still on. Seal Alert has now requested this assurance in writing from Namibian sealing industry.
 
Is it blackmail and extortion to pay these seal killers, probably both, but that is the 'business' of killing seals, and as such a private business solution is the only answer to end it.
 
The success or failure of this buy-out to end the seal cull, depends larger upon whether the 'New Animal Mafia' will allow the truly concerned little guy to succeed, as stated by Hatem Yavuz in an email to a supporter, "about the sell out? Only François Hugo, of whom I get along very well is the only legitimate activist I have known, as other major activists are using and basically supporting the harvest or cull for generating donations......using the hype for their own income. Now how ethical is this. This is why I personally don't believe the buy out will take place, the other activists will dilute this situation".
 
It is not rather strong evidence, that although the international anti-seal hunt movement or the 'new animal mafia' although fully informed of the Namibian seal cull situation, chooses to remain deadly silent offering no support to this development, whilst muttering amongst themselves in secret, "I think this is a con and an attempt to pull $14 million out of a gullible public. There can be no guarantees with Namibia. This is no different than a Nigerian extortion scheme" to backroad this offer which had a very real chance of ending the Namibian seal cull, when they themselves fleeced the public when they Offered Canada $16 Million to End its Seal Hunt (http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/news-060404-1.html).
 
Or, is this just a case where the little guy must not be allowed to win for the seals.
 
Even stranger, is when  it is muttered in secret, "why Hatem did not bring this offer to them", even stranger is their reasons given for no support, is that the EU ban has killed the seal skin fur market for Cape fur seals in Namibia. When in fact the New Animal Mafia, went out of their way to "forget to tell the EU about the largest baby seal cull taking place in Namibia", to then claim credit for the ban, when in fact, it was only because of the invention of De Beers and Francois Hugo, at the final hour, that saw the EU include the Cape fur seal species, and 15 other species hunted, who were all ignored, in the ban.
 
Perhaps only time itself, time the Cape fur seals don't have, whether the 'New Animal Mafia' was 'conning' us all to the last donated cent.
 
If I was an animal lover I would pledge my $15 to save the life-time of the seals in Namibia and end it.
 
If we don't buy them all out, Namibian sealers stand to nett 5 million US dollars over next ten years, and Hatem 100 million. How much further wildlife suffering will he inflict with these profits ?
 
For the Seals
Francois Hugo Seal Alert-SA
27-21-790 8774
http://sealalertsa.wordpress.com/
 

Sponsored Links