April 05, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
You can take the girl out of Greenpeace, ...
But I guess you can never take Greenpeace out of the girl...
My "career" as an activist began twenty years ago when, at 19, I was hired as a grassroots canvasser/organizer for Greenpeace New England. To be honest, before I took the job, I'd never heard of the "direct action" organization, despite being a fairly politically engaged teenager. But it was a job, and I was stuck in Boston for the summer, having subletted a room in a frat on Beacon Street. I ended up staying for nearly two years, only leaving after incidents of harassment (of myself and coworkers) by my boss went unaddressed by senior management. Not exactly an amicable parting, but not the worst either.
During our initial indoctrination, er, training, we were shown Greenpeace's prize fundraising video, a "documentary" of the Canadian baby seal hunt. Maybe because of my "circle-of-life" Indian upbringing, but I'm seldom squeamish over hunting events, including Makah whale hunting or old-time buffalo "kill jumps". But baby seal hunting, for some reason, strikes a whole different chord. Even if carried out by indigenous hunters (it's not), I don't think I could get behind the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of one-month old seals, solely for the use of their skins for luxury coats, gloves and hats.
One of Greenpeace's few true victories was the near banning of the annual Īles de la Madeleine, Quebec, baby harp seal clubbing event. For a number of seasons, the hunt was in fact cancelled; in other years, particularly during the late 80's and 90's, the scale of the hunt was dramatically cut back, as demand for seal skin dropped precipitously due to mounting public disapproval of the brutality of the hunt.
According to the NYTimes, however, the annual hunt is now back, and bigger than ever, with demand up due to healthy markets in Russia, Poland and China. The Canadian government quietly upped the hunt quota this year to 350,000 baby harp seals. 350,000, out of a worldwide population of estimated at 5 million.
That any government would agree to such a number in a species just beginning to rebound from the brink of near extinction (due to the same hunting practices) is fairly stunning. That it's the Canadians, whom so many Northeastern Progressives nearly idolize, is disappointing.
When Greenpeace and other organizations began their campaign thirty years ago to end the annual baby seal hunt, the Internet existed only for DARPA and geeks; it will be interesting to see the impact of the 'net, including the communication value of blogs and the fundraising capacity of activist environmental/animal rights organization's websites, on a practice previously deemed horrendous when viewed mostly through the lens of direct mail and door to door canvassing.
Ironically, Greenpeace no longer actively protests the baby seal hunt.
Sign the petition here.
Posted by MB Williams at April 5, 2004 06:59 AM | TrackBackMy first post-university job was with the rampaging television program This Hour Has Seven Days (of which a number of American shows like "Sixty Minutes" are pale imitations) -- and one of that program's most successful "causes" was the regulations on the killing of seals. The present method, with a hardwood club at least four feet long, replaces the earlier one -- which was often just skinning the little beasts alive.
Opposition to the hunt, however, is entirely misguided, imho. The harp seal is a nasty piece of business, destroying millions of tons of cod, often half eaten, and specializing in the torture of the fish, just as cats will torture mice.
The collapse of the St. Lawrence and Grand Banks fishery is only partly caused by human carelessness. People took about 1.5 million tons of cod at the peak. The seals take a couple of million tons even today -- only today they are killing the young cod, because that is all that remain. They are cutting the growth off at its start, and preventing the entire fishery from recovering.
The best thing environmentalists can do about this whole miserable mess is encourage the market for sealskin coats, preferably floor length. In the meantime, let us give thanks for the Chinese medicine marketers for establishing a market in seal penises -- which incidentally takes the pressure off black bear poaching.
A secondary, but wider, concern of people concerned about ecology would be to spread the notion that life forms should be judged on something other than their cuteness.
My concern for harp seals has little to do with their "cuteness", and I frankly don't give a fig as to whether they play with their food before they eat it. Seals, like most living organisms, play an importance role in their environments, whether it be to eat or be eaten. The fishing industry has been more severely damaged by human action than that of a few million seals - why not go after predatory fish, whales, seal lions, porpoises, etc., etc., as well, if all we're talking about is our bottom dollar. (BTW, I come from a fishing family dating back to the first Indian who owned a European-style sloop in Maine in the late 1600s, so don't think it's not personal.)
Your arguments that ecological travesties are justifiable if they benefit human economy is more than misguided, imo. It does, however, provide an appropriate seque into my next post however, due up later today.
Posted by: mb at April 5, 2004 10:33 AMGreat site, thanks!
Are you aware of U o MI - Michiguama?
check out resource page:
http://www.goodspeedupdate.com/index-michigamua.htm
and news about what is happening now. (halfway down)
http://www.goodspeedupdate.com/2004_03_01_archive.html
Posted by: Mark at April 5, 2004 07:06 PM