NATURE FORUM WORLDWIDE

[sealman]

Yes, it appears this issue turns up the moment the facts start coming out. I fight for the seals because a) they have no voice and b) because it is just so wrong. The US used to import all the skins of these pups. It stopped after introducing regulations than banned imports of a) a pup nursing b)manner inhumane. SA govt took the US to court and lost. This was in 1972. It was wrong to continue with a 90% nursing pup quota killing millions.

Perhaps when I end baby seal clubbing, I can address other issues, but for now my task is the seals. Why because it is so wrong.

At the highest the population reached in 1993, with 225 000 pups. Namibia set a sustainable pup quota of 48 000 (it is now 85 000), sealers were only able to harvest 33 000 or 68%. Which meant they killed everything. Which means it was not even sustainable then, higher population, much lower quota. It was wrong. In 2006, Namibia increased the pup quota from 65 000 to 85 000, whilst admitting that the population was 185 000, which is lower than it was 13 years earlier (what justified such massive increase on a population even lower). To go from 33 000 to 85 000 on a population lower. Not only this, it lengthened the sealing season to July, instead of August to November (meaning even younger suckling/nursing pups would be clubbed to death). Even worse, although admitting that the two main sealing concessionaires rights to seal ended in 2007, and cabinet had set a policy (due to collapsed fisheries) that govt would not issue new rights, even mentioning these two sealing rights in a cabinet address. Even worse than this, govt then sets this massive quota to roll for three years. It was very wrong.

But worse even still, within a month after sealing started, public started reporting mass death of seals on the beaches. Did namibia stop - no. Namibian sealers admitted to reporters that they had to stop sealing to bury up to 900 seal pups a day (can you imagine this madness chasing after already dying, starving weak pups, too weak to move to club those that have not died already to death). Even worse Namibian govt called in bull-dozers to dig mass beach graves (pics on my website 2006). Instead of using the recently dead seal pups for the quota, they buried them, and still chased after the ones barely alive to try and fill this massive quota.

What else did the sealers do, well as there were not enough pups, clubbed older seals which is against the sealing regulations. Death does not come quickly for an older seal with a thicker skull, repeated blows are needed, these seals were also weak and starving.

How many were alive, well according to Namibian press release, very few of the pups would make it to weaning age. Biologists reported pups were growing at only 10% of their norm. That is a body condition 90% underweight - all of them.

It was wrong for Namibia not to stop sealing then. In 2007, they dropped the quota to 80 000 (just 5000 less), and when I flew over 22 days in 139 day sealing season (which takes place daily), there was not a single seal left on the colony - not one.

They should have stopped.

None of these figures are fabricated, they come directly from ministry. Each fact can be proven.

Yes, cows will return to Cape Cross, because they get re-impregnated 6 days after diving birth and then carry the pup inside until next December, but by July, the events of the past few years will just repeat itself.

It is pure sickness to rape an infant child (yet the act of intercourse with a consenting adult is not), this is the difference between Namibia's sealing policy and killing animals, but it is even worse, to rape a STARVING infant child during the course of it starving to death, and to do so for an entire community, with government sanction.

This is really, really sick.

How it got to this, I will never know, but it must end NOW!

Sealman

[Kiki Suarez]

My dear friend Martina K., a dear friend who lives in Laos, wrote me this:

Wusstest du, dass Deutschland aus Profitgründen (Rüstungsindustrie) nicht den Streubombensperrvertrag unterschreibt? Neben Libanon und Afghanistan ist Laos am meisten verseucht. Da gibt es auch exakte Zahlern. Wusstest du, dass die Amis allein auf Vietnam 72 Mio Liter Agent Orange (Dioxin) geschüttet haben? Dabei unbekannte Mengen auf Laos und Kambodscha. Der Boden ist total verseucht auf Ewigkeiten. Das Gift ist in den Nahrungskreislauf, Wasserkreislauf etc. eingedrungen. Krebserkrankungen steigen rapide. Alles Sachen, die man mit Geld beheben könnte. Dagegen sind mir die Robben egal.

For whoever does not speak German: she and other friends tell me all the sick and unjust situations so many people live in and say: how can you worry so much about SEALS?????

I wonder, if it is an either/or - situation. Aren´t we all connected?

KIKI
_________________
kikitheartist

The deepest truth of Buddhist philosophy holds that at the center of the universe, and of each human being, there is a basic goodness and that everything is connected to everything else. www.kikitheartist.com

[sealman]

In reply to the BIG QUESTION. Why do I save seals and not humans. The PM of Namibia asked me the same question. What we forget, is that we are all species of this planet, based on population, the human species is not remotely threatened. There are in fact 60 000 humans to 1 seal, yet seals live in 70% of this planets waters. Would not the saving of more humans be a pointless exercise, if there was no natural world left, to breath fresh air, drink water or eat. Saving the natural world is therefore far more important. If there is a crime being committed against any human, anyone could charge that person. If a domestic dog owner starved or clubbed his own dog to death, anyone could criminally charge him as it would be a crime. But who do I charge when the seals are starving to death, the fishermen, sealers or govt. Who do I charge if they club these seals? The answer nobody, because under law they are not the owners. Nobody is, under any constitution in the world, the natural living resources may only be utilised SUSTAINABLY. This is the only right govt or anybody has on this planet. If seals are starving to death because of overfishing and declining, these RIGHTS fall away for all. But, in Namibia's case, they refuse to stop. Hence why I must fight for this natural world for all

[Kiki Suarez]

Thank you, Sealman, I think this is an important question, because it divides people who could and should fight together.

In Namibia I met many people who loved the desert, the wild animals or the birds, but who - in my eyes - treated black people not as equals. Even after 19 years of having abolished Apartheid. In the Mexican town where I live used to live a famous Swiss woman : Trudy Duby Blom, an extraordinary photographer of Chiapas and the Lacandon Indians. The last decades of her life she fought for the trees of the Chiapanecan jungle. Once I met her on the Zurich airport. She had given a speech about the jungle and how to save the trees. We sat there and she commented: Look at all these people around us - how ugly they are! Her face showed how she hated people.

That impressed me very much. It does not check. We are all ONE being. Wherever I encounter a soul in distress, I am called to do something about it if I can, be it a man, a seal, a bird or the jungle. Nobody can fight for it all, but we could each accept our little niche of the whole and in different times of life, these might be different niches.

As we are all ONE being, we should never forget that our "enemy" is part of the whole, too. I know that is easy to say and the biggest challenge, but it is of utmost importance.
If love really is love, it always includes. Whenever we exclude a part of the whole from our love, our actions are often more about self - importance.

I write so easily about this and have it mostly messed up inside myself, too. It is hard to be a human - being.

Many greetings KIKI
_________________
kikitheartist

The deepest truth of Buddhist philosophy holds that at the center of the universe, and of each human being, there is a basic goodness and that everything is connected to everything else. www.kikitheartist.com

[Daan Vreugdenhil]

Should people care about animals, plants and nature, while so many people in the world still live in extreme poverty, parents don't have enough to feed their children enough and send them to school.

Throughout my 4 decades of working for conservation, I have been asked that question many times. There are many sides to conservation: ethics, economics, feelings, etc. I will briefly touch upon a few.

Lets start with the ethics. The conservation movement started fairly much with the privileged, and when I became interested in conservation in the 1960s, it still was promoted by people from the upper middle class and up, with quite a few people from noble families. With the student movement starting in Paris in 1968, this rapidly changed. The European Nature Conservation Year 1970, which I attended as the representative of the European youth nature organizations, set in a movement of popularization of concern for nature, followed by the United Nations Summit on the Environment in Stockholm in 1972. Nature conservation became a theme on the agendas of developing countries.

Why? First of all there were strong indications that national parks could generate tourism, particularly in combination with cultural heritage sites. Also, sustainable use of wildlife could produce food. Studies had shown that an hectare of land grazed by wildlife could produce up to twice or three times as much meat as traditional cattle, while it was not susceptible to some of the African diseases that cattle suffers from. So developing countries started to become interested in creating national parks and conserving wildlife.

Safaris or ecotourism didn't really start off until the early 80s, but some countries were really starting to get the benefits. Now that tourism to developing countries really is taking off, one only needs to think what it is that any tourist would motivate to go and visit a developing country. Some countries have beautiful archaeological sites (Maya, Inca, Moslim, Hindu, etc. etc.). When people go to a developing country they have expectations of seeing a bit of everything: archaeological sites, tropical jungle with monkeys and parrots or savannahs with wildlife and beaches with palms and where available frolicking seals, turtles coral reefs and spectacular birds like pelicans, frigate birds, etc. About a decade ago the president of Honduras asked me why he should support the creation and management of protected areas, and I wrote him a short memo calculating for him which position the tourism sector took among the economic activities of his country (position 3) and how much it generated in revenues and employment (10s of thousands directly). I also asked him to place himself in the shoes of an American or European tourist and think what it could be that those people would come to visit Honduras for. It was not for exclusive hotels, because those were everywhere in the world. There were 3 factors: 1 Maya ruin, tropical forest with parrots and monkeys and beaches with coral reefs. 2 attractions purely related to nature. After we had talked for an hour, he became a strong supporter of the World Bank conservation programme I worked for. National parks and animals are extremely important reasons to visit a developing country, and tourist actually want to see the animals, preferably from relatively closeby. Seals are among the most appreciated animals because they are such a fun animals to watch, and in many places you can actually swim among them and they play with you. That is a very important reason to care about seals!

It is very difficult to sell to an average tourist that you actual slaughter those animals, and particularly if there are issues about the way it is being done. I am a wildlife manager and I understand a lot about culling animals, but I also understand the issue of tourism, because my wife and I started ecotourism to the now most popular spot in the Amazon region of Ecuador http://www.cuyabenolodge.com and for a while we actually took ecotourists to the jungle ourselves. Tourist want to know that areas and animals are protected. So if there is a reason to cull animals, it is very important that there be a very good explanation why that is needed. Sealman challenges the reasons of the Namibian government, and it seems very unwise of the officials to ignore this issue, given the fact that ecotourism with those lovely amusing animals must be a far more important industry that culling seals, and worldwide the growth of the the ecotourismsector is the fastest growing economic sector for developing countries. So, seals contribute to employment, to the economy, simply by being there and frolicking in the water! Thousand and thousands of jobs in hotels, restaurants, busses, safari outfitters, grocery shops, car rental corporations, taxis, etc. etc.
Nowadays many socially motivated people recognize the job creation element and are very much in support of conservation when and if it promotes employment, particularly among local populations.

On the ethical side, we live in a world where mankind is changing everything very rapidly.If we take properly care of nature, we will still lose between 30 and 50% of all the species of the world before the end of this century. A short explanation of the calculation is here : http://www.birdlist.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3. The prediction is on a simple general ecological principle. Are we as people entitled to carelessly ignore that half of the species of the world go extinct and NOT care about is and NOT worry about it? I don't think so. Particularly if you look at the costs of managing the 10 - 15 % of the world as protected areas. The World Institute for Conservation and Environment, WICE [url]http://www.wice.ws [/url] has calculated that it costs about $1,500,000,000 per year to properly protect all the protected areas in the developing countries. The total amounts for budgets of developing countries usually is less than 1 - 2 %. Moreover, 75% of those costs is labour (park rangers, wildlife managers, etc.). That is not taking into consideration the employment it creates in the tourism sector. In terms of money, conservation really does not compete with education, health and food.

Wildlife is a part of the culture of indigenous peoples. If wildlife disappears, the very basis of much of the cultural traditions of indigenous peoples simply ceases to exist. Do we care? Well, I do.

A few countries spend great sums of money on development cooperation. Don't be misgtaken, not many. The important ones: the USA, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands are the major donors. Far behind comes French, the UK, the Scandinavian countries, Spain. All these countries spend 99% of their money on poverty alleviation, or in other words they promote a better life for the people. Less than 1% is spend on conservation, and even that is primarily focussed on poverty alleviation for the people living around national parks.

In fact, so little is spend on it that we risk losing far more than the 50% of our species. I invite you to read why on our website http://www.adopt-a-ranger.org.

So again, being concerned about nature and wildlife does NOT compete with helping the poor, but rather it COMPLEMENTS it.

I can go on with much more, but I don't have time for that. I just want to stress the importance of motives of people of good will. I like Mrs Suarez a lot. She is an artist. Artist work from the heart. Mrs Suarez started this dialogue because she loved the Seals. I think that love for nature is the most important argument for consservation. Should we stop producing, buying and selling art and just focus on the poor? Should we sell of the Rembrandts and van Goghs to help the poor? What a horrible world we would pass on to our children: No forests, no wild animals, no museums, no creative people like Kiki who expresses her feelings in colourful paintings.

We are all different and we have all different talents. If poverty makes you tick: Friends I find it a very noble cause to fight for it. Please go on and spend all your available time and money to better the world. If conservation makes you tick (like it does me): I love to work with conservationists and I am not ashamed on working for conservation. If art makes you tick: Artists make our world more beautiful, and I love the joy of an art performance, visiting a museum. Please go for it.

If individual animals and their rights make you tick, you are a very kind and loving person, and you should focus on what moves you. Animal rights people remind society to not blindly do everything with animals but treat them as creatures with feelings. Without them society can become very heartless.

The most important thing is to realize that we are all motivated by slightly different feelings and motives. That makes us strong and diverse. Lets all respect each others motivation and together we can build a world with room for healthy, well fed, well educated people, living together with at least 10 - 15% of our planet covered with nature, forests, animals, rivers, mountains, etc.

Well, I hope this helped.
Best to you all.
_________________
Dr. Ir. Daan Vreugdenhil
Please visit: http://www.birdlist.org/site/why_birds.htm and
http://www.adopt-a-ranger.org
as well as our beautiful pictures at:
http://www.nature-worldwide.info/phpbb/album.php

[Nikki]

Kiki - I would like to add to that question.

The short and simple answer is this: all animals have a role to play in nature. Nature was made in perfect balance until man interefered.
The role of a top predator, such as a seal, is to keep the "lower" species in tact. If you remove a top predator from its environment, it will have a domino effect on the eco-system and these domino effects are always negative.
Of course this does not just count for seals, but for all species, but in this specific case, in the case of the seal, by saving them, we are saving eco-systems which has a world wide effect on all of us.

[Nikki]

Daan -

You mentioned in one of your posts:

From the dialogue, it appears to me that groups of people with different viewpoints don't communicate sufficiently with each other. I know this is not easy, and emotions easily get in the way, particularly when dealing with such lovely little vulnerable creatures as seal cups.

I would like to point out to you that if we are not communicating sufficiently with each other it is because there are people/authorities/organisations out there that don't want to communicate. I can truly say that from OUR side (Seal Alert and its activists), there is more than sufficient communication. But how do you get answers or communication out of brick walls?

Emotions get in the way because there is no co-operation. We all know what we are doing, we are all quite clued up on the subject, and MY emotions get the better of me when I get frustrated because of a lack of communication and co-operation. It has nothing to do with the fact that we are dealing with seal pups.

[sealman]

I think Daan's comments on why to conserve nature/wildlife, says it all perfectly. What really drives me today, and its such a pity I missed it in my youth (to really experience it fully), when I was more able and physically active, was this world of seals that exist all around us. At 45, I find it harder to swim and dive as often as in the past. I spent almost my entire youth either on or under the seas, I encountered seals many times, but all I ever got was glimpses of form or shape, meaningless objects moving past. Seals meant nothing to me (although I have always loved animals), I saw them neither as individual characters, their harsh existence, pain or difficulty in just surviving one day to the next.

Try sleeping on an offshore rocks surrounded by the sounds of 300kg seals sleeping alongside and crawling on top of you baby pups with their rubbery flippers, with the night sky and stars above, your blanket the heat from their living bodies, and you have lived.

Sadly conservation in southern Africa, particularly when a species is termed a resource, within a massive job creating industry like the fishing industry and where the general public have not the slightest clue what is truly going on between fishermen, the sea and seals, for example. Protection, relies simply on numbers on a PC, meaningless to the species themselves and completely un-reflective of the reality.

Since I started rescuing these seals a decade ago, a completely new and exciting world opened before my eyes, a world as different as going to another planet, but not just another planet, a planet filled with these strange and wonderful creatures. It is just such a shame, that such a world, that has existed for millions of years, lies right before our eyes, a living, breathing ancient society that almost everybody knows absolutely nothing about.

Looking is not knowing, feeling is what it is all about.

When I am working with seals, an African will approach me and looking confused whilst I feed them, ask and I doing this to bred them and can you eat them. A tourist from UK will ask, is someone paying you to feed them. A tourist from Germany will ask where can you hunt them and a tourist from the far east will ask, can we export them to our zoo.

For all, I feel very sad.

As such my life has become surrounded by these seals. Like the average person goes off to work each day and interacts with other humans, I do the same, expect my fellow humans are seals. When you are let into this marvelous society, you begin to feel and understand how another (alien) species exists, what makes them tick, what drives them, how they exist without laws. How they communicate, respect and survive.

It is then that you begin to truly see seals, and truly see them for what they are, and how complexed their existence is, and how nothing is a simply as just eating fish or quantities of it.

Is extinction of this natural world possible, yes, and its happening right now. In Hout Bay, surrounded by the famous Table Mountain, the last leopard disappeared years ago, baboons are down to the last few troops, and the once plentiful cape otter, is a rear sighting. Whilst today most game parks are filled with zebra's, its close cousin the quagga, which once roamed the southern African plains is extinct. In 1870, when the then govt acted to save the species, they began the process, only to discover it was already extinct. The last surviving quagga died in a zoo in Europe in1870.

What this clearly tells us, we need to act now, not wait for govt and start to really live on this planet.

If I died tomorrow, I would die very happy, because my life meant something, not just for me, but for so many other creatures, who can go on, and live life. We live on average, 72 Winters, Summers, Autumns and Spring's. Just a number, not a very large number. Lets live it full, wise and for the better. How many of us can say this.

I can think of 100 ways to make money from seals, without harming a single hair on their head. In ways that will also fill your own life, and make 100 times more than killing them. We have not even touched the surface, of these seals potential, to enrich us and our lives, and communities around us.

Think carefully about the following, remove the seal-ecotourism from Hout Bay fishing harbour, go out and club the nearby seal colony into extinction. Gone will go the hundreds of thousands of colourful tourists from around the world, gone will be their purchases of curio items from disadvantaged poor traders, their valuable dollars gone, gone will go the restaurants. The fishing harbour will return to just another smelly fishing port, filled with crime, driving down with it, the price of surrounding properties, and the safe environment we are need. In all, all that stands between an entire town lossing billions is a few group of seals, that nobody knows or cares less about.

Its time we wise up, and think before we act.

Namibia, come to your senses. Your ex-director of Marine Resources, the main advocate of seal culls, came to his, and instead of going fishing, started the very successful Cape Cross Seal Lodge which markets exclusively seal viewing, this being the only lodge near the colony at Cape Cross.

[Kiki Suarez]

I am disappointed to report that Mrs. Asheeke asked me to take her off my mailing list. I answered her this:

What a pity, Mrs. Asheeke that you who have fought for the human rights in your country, which is one of the very few in the world that has nature conservation written in its constitution, are not willing to better a critical situation in your beloved country. I did not know many things about seals which I have learnt now. I do see many different facets, but as a minister of such a promising country, wouldn´t it be good to try and better certain situations like the one with the seals?



I will now take you off my mailing list - with sadness.



Many greetings Kiki Suarez
_________________
kikitheartist

The deepest truth of Buddhist philosophy holds that at the center of the universe, and of each human being, there is a basic goodness and that everything is connected to everything else. www.kikitheartist.com

[sealman]

Namibia makes the mistake of thinking Seal Alert-SA is simply chasing feel good donations and using the Namibian baby seal clubbing as its cash cow - and will move on if ignored. Big, big mistake on their part. Millions of dollars of feel good donations only come when an organization proves itself. Seal Alert-SA still has to prove itself, to do that, our reputation is based on one thing, and one thing only - ending the Namibian slaughter of endangered seals.

I live for this day, I love being ignored it fuels my determination and drives me to reach out globally even larger.

That is all we will focus our energies on, we will not shift to flavour of the month or sexy other animal causes, like whaling or elephant culls or other species of seals, to chase those dollars, but we will link and inform those multi-million dollar international organizations with their millions of members, who will and have clearly already used it.

Over 15 million animal supporters in over 80 countries around the world have seen the Namibian youtube seal clubbing video and received alerts with funding appeals from these big groups. We will continue to keep them daily informed.

Seal Alert-SA only started to campaign to end the Namibian seal slaughter in July 2006. Within a year and half, we have generated hundreds of newspaper, radio and television interviews. In fact, yahoo voted one of our seal clubbing pics as the most viewed on that particular day in the world, used in world newspapers. We have got Namibia's largest employer and contributor to GDP to in writing denounce seal clubbing and has even gone as far as asking the EU to assist Seal Alert-SA in banning imports of Namibian seal products to Europe. Their largest market. We have taken two of Namibia's largest incoming tourist countries, and had them already introduce legislation banning all Namibian seal product imports - Germany and Netherlands. Whilst major countries like the US already banning imports, with others to follow, like Italy, UK etc.

We have even had the scientific committee of the European Food and Safety Authority produce a report which informs the Commissioners drawing up plans to ban seal imports, that Namibia's sealing industry is cruel and inhumane, with herding baby nursing seals unacceptable. Likewise our report in a prelude to an EU wide ban, clearly spelt out the socio-economic aspects in favour of ending sealing. We have reported Namibia's seal management to the IUCN and have laid a complaint with the UN Convention In Trade of Endangered Species. We have been asked by US and South African import officials to help track illegal seal exports from Namibian sealers, with already 5000 skins be seized in the US and an importer convicted twice in SA.

What Namibia does not realise, is that I have only just started. They should know, that 90% of my time was absorbed with daily saving seals lives, a factor I have to re-think in order to focus 100% of my energies on trying to save the entire species.

Through our boycott Namibia efforts, if I just persuade 1000 tourists a year to take their hard earned dollars elsewhere. That is more than treble its current sealing industry with importing countries drying up fast as the ban increases. Tens of millions of much needed dollars will disappear permanently, compound this over 10 or 20 years, it takes to end sealing, and the losses are staggering.

Namibia digging in it's heels or burying its head in the sand, just wont work. Because unlike all, I live and breath this, its all I think about, all I do. The longer it takes, the greater the awareness and the greater the damage.

I can see Namibia playing into my cash cow hands, making Seal Alert-SA grow into millions of supporting members, giving us their millions and millions.

Or, they could just announce its ended. That is the quickest, cheapest route to get rid of Seal Alert-SA for good or they could work with us to conserve this species, which we will do everything in our ability to ensure Namibia prospers.

Personally, I would do it tomorrow, before the EU announces an EU wide ban on Namibian seal imports, and the effects it will have on tourism. Tourists don't think kindly of a country that their own country is officially banning products from.

What tourist family would feel safe travelling alone in the desert, with a government that has a policy of clubbing nursing baby seals, shooting bulls for their penises and allowing any wacko with a bow&arrow or rifle trophy hunt sleeping seals on a beach. It takes just one child to be shot accidentally.

I am been doing seal protection for a decade now, at 45, I have at least 20-25 years of good fight still in me and the wonderful tool of mass media hungry and the internet always looking for a good story, year after year, after year.

Sealman

[Kiki Suarez]

I see that many people have read about this issue. Is something new happening? Sealman or Nikki, has something shifted or moved with the issue of the Cape Cross seals?

Many greetings KIKI
_________________
kikitheartist

The deepest truth of Buddhist philosophy holds that at the center of the universe, and of each human being, there is a basic goodness and that everything is connected to everything else. www.kikitheartist.com