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Outrage at new mass slaughter of baby seals
Guardian ^ | 04/11/04 | Mark Townsend

Posted on 04/10/2004 6:53:21 PM PDT by Pikamax

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To: Skooz
So if we don't kill off thousand of seals, they eat the very food, fish, upon which we depend. You know, when man killed the wolves, he assumed the responsibilty of keeping the herds in check.

It's really that simple.

You haven't spent much time observing nature. Here's a word to look up: exacerbate

61 posted on 04/14/2004 7:31:31 PM PDT by spald
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To: spald
You don't have to snotty about it.

You assert that if baby seals were not clubbed, the seals would be so numerous as to exhaust the supply of fish in the sea, correct?

The assertion is nonsense.
62 posted on 04/14/2004 7:33:53 PM PDT by Skooz (My Biography: Psalm 40:1-3)
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To: Skooz
I'm not snotty. I'm 74 years old.

I most respectfully submit that nature is a beautiful thing to behold (look up that word also).

There are checks and balances in the system. If you remove one predator, another assumes the task.

One way or the other, another assumes the task (this could be a microbe, mammal or virus, etc).

Please forgive me my forthrightness; I meant no offense.

63 posted on 04/14/2004 7:41:26 PM PDT by spald
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To: spald
I understand nature and appreciate the checks and balances God has provided. But, this is not a case of checks and balances. This is a case of extreme cruelty to a helpless baby animal for no good reason.

No ecological function is served by killing these seals. This isn't "culling the herd" as some have suggested. The seal population has no need to be culled. This is a quick buck to be made by beating seal puppies to death. Nothing more.

I hate arguing with my elders. :0)
64 posted on 04/14/2004 7:47:21 PM PDT by Skooz (My Biography: Psalm 40:1-3)
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To: Skooz
You are not arguing now so we are at peace.

This is a cull plain and simple. Please appreciate the specific and God-given role of the predator in nature. It's natural and it is sublime.

The cubs are adorable. It makes nature's wrath that much harder to comprehend.

I don't make up the rules of nature. I just observe, interpret and marvel. Rest assured that if man did not intervene, another entity would.

It would be best to just ignore the seal cub happenstance. Any human intervention to stop the culling would certainly lead to far greater short-term hardship on the cubs, as is the normal vector.

Of these thing, I do not know why. It just is and any human intervention tends to complicate the situation with more dire circumstances for the indigenous animal population.

65 posted on 04/14/2004 8:20:47 PM PDT by spald
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To: Eurotwit
You see the thing is these baby seals are innocent creatures who don't kill anything except to survive. I am not against hunting and I am not some Ecological nut myself but this is just mass slaughter - no escape. At least in hunting the animal has the chance to run or hide and when a hunter shoots he takes the trophy home either to eat or mount and there isn't a mass slaughter on this scale and most hunters follow the rules and don't kill babies. These babies can hardly move and some big burly neanderthal with a club comes along to smash his/her skull - strip the hide off and leave the rest to rot. This is disgusting and pitiful!
66 posted on 04/15/2004 6:25:31 AM PDT by areafiftyone (Democrats = the hamster is dead but the wheel is still spinning)
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To: Long Cut
If an act contains neither honor nor dignity nor decency, it is an act that Men should condemn.

Exactly. Your entire post is very well said.

67 posted on 04/15/2004 8:41:13 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: Centurion2000
I live in Texas, thank God.

So damn what! I don't care if you lived on Mars, moron.

Deal with it.

I don't have to, but your fellow "Texans" do and I'd be willing to bet that the Texans I know well, would just as soon you'd leave.

but until then other people are making a living off animal products.

You're not one of those sub-human critters that work in the French owned slaughter houses that kill horses for meat that is sent to Europe, are you? Are you what is known as a "nutter" at the slaughter house? Do they pay you in French Francs? Or do you work poultry and are just a friggen "chicken plucker"?

68 posted on 04/15/2004 8:57:44 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: elbucko
Thanks. I refined it and expanded it over here. Provoked a nice discussion, too. Head over and check it out.

You know, I'm not against all animal harvest; I like steak and lobster as much as the next guy. And I am quite aware that we as a species are certainly not saints when it comes to our treatment of even those animals we breed for food. But we HAVE to draw a line somewhere. If we can't in such an obvious and self-evident case of brutal cruelty as this, then what does that make us?

Don't believe that crap about "prtecting the fish stocks", either. The seals do not eat anywhere nearly as many as are caught every year. The reason that the fishermen are having lower catches is that THEY overfish their grounds. Now, to make up the difference caused by their OWN overfishing, they're wastefully and brutally killing yet ANOTHER species. Sickening.

69 posted on 04/15/2004 9:07:34 AM PDT by Long Cut
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To: spald
"This is a cull plain and simple."

It is not. In a true, humane cull, such things as poisoned darts would be used. The targets would be adults, breeding-aged females mostly, and older males. The temptation to make a quick buck would be removed by strict regulation and policing of the process.

Not here. Here we have a situation where there is money to be made. So, we kill infants (better coats!) with a club so as not to ruin the hides. Oh, and if it's not dead, well, skin it anyway! Forget the adults. They make up some Bravo Sierra about protecting the fishing stocks (from their NATURAL predators, LOL!) that they themselves have depleted to provide a thin cover. The whole enterprise is sleazy beyond belief.

it's no better, really, than when the Zimbabwean government claimed it needed to "cull" elephants...which it did with machine guns and then hacked out the tusks, which were sold for ivory, gaining big $$$. They killed entire family units and left most of them to rot.

70 posted on 04/15/2004 9:17:35 AM PDT by Long Cut
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To: syriacus
"I thought the Canadians were supposed to be kinder than we are."

They are, they are much kinder to terrorists....not seals however.
71 posted on 04/15/2004 9:41:22 AM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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To: spald
Please appreciate the specific and God-given role of the predator in nature....

Clubbing seals for money is not "predation", it's degradation. A predator eats what it kills in order to survive. Predators do not parade around in the skin of what it has killed. The only animal that kills more than it needs and then wears the skins beyond the necessity of survival in the elements, is Man.

BTW, this so-called culling is excused on the grounds that the seals are eating all the fish, but the article makes mention of the fact the reduction in fish population may be due to over-fishing. Could it be that the "clubbers" are the very same fishermen that deplete their own resource and then blame the depletion of fish on the seals so they can go club the seals to make up for their lack of husbandry.

What was the fish-to-seal balance before man came along? Someone is not telling the truth, ignoring known facts, or both. The clubbers probably vote "Labor" in Canada.

72 posted on 04/15/2004 9:43:55 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: Skooz
"Clubbing them to make coats"

Coats are a by-product. They are clubbing them so that you can have cod at Red Lobster next week, or did you want to donate yours to the seals?
73 posted on 04/15/2004 9:44:17 AM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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To: ASTM366
"Bunch of bloodthirsty killers living up there"

More likely a bunch of people trying to make a living.
74 posted on 04/15/2004 9:46:36 AM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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To: Long Cut
Here we have a situation where there is money to be made.

And votes to be secured, as well as the provincial and national treasury to be enriched on taxes collected from the clubbers.

75 posted on 04/15/2004 9:47:52 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: oldcomputerguy
They are clubbing them so that you can have cod at Red Lobster next week,

Oh, please. This "hunt" has nothing whatsoever to do with preserving fish that would otherwise be eaten by the seals. They would have to slaughter far far more than they are to have any effect on the cod population.

These seals are being bludgeoned for one reason: People in Ukraine and East Europe like the coats. The rest of the seal is discarded.

76 posted on 04/15/2004 9:52:14 AM PDT by Skooz (My Biography: Psalm 40:1-3)
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To: Long Cut
" Their cruel slaughter is entirely pointless "

You must have missed the part about each one eating a ton of fish a year when they're grown.
77 posted on 04/15/2004 9:53:47 AM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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To: Pikamax
man oh man I'd love to taste one of those little things.
78 posted on 04/15/2004 10:01:36 AM PDT by isom35
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To: Long Cut
The seals do not eat anywhere nearly as many as are caught every year. The reason that the fishermen are having lower catches is that THEY over fish their grounds.

I think so too. Whatever number that is cited as being the "tonnage" of fish that each seal will eat is likely to be a gross exaggeration. The "Seal Clubbing" is simply welfare. Welfare that the government of Canada gets a cut of, rather than having to pay out to the poor starving fish goons that crap in their own nest.

79 posted on 04/15/2004 10:48:02 AM PDT by elbucko (I'm not a real SOB, but I play one on FreeRepublic.)
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To: Skooz
"They would have to slaughter far far more than they are to have any effect on the cod population"

Since ordinary fishing is killing the cod population already, anything they eat is something that we are not eating.
80 posted on 04/15/2004 12:22:33 PM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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