The wild smell of grilled seal meat is assaulting the nostrils of Strasbourg MEPs this week. Inuit indigenous people arrived in Belgium from Greenland to protest in front of the European Parliament against the general ban on seal products, introduced in 2010
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
The wild smell of grilled seal meat is assaulting the nostrils of Strasbourg MEPs this week. The indigenous Inuit people arrived in Belgium from Greenland to protest in front of the European Parliament against the general ban on seal products, introduced in 2010.
The exports of Fr.seals plummeted by 90% after the introduction of the European ban. The impact on subsistence economies in 60 Greenland coastal communities has been catastrophic. "It's a tragic situation for us" says Karl Lyberth, a hunter who was Greenland's Minister of Fisheries, Agriculture and Food. “Many people in the European Union don't understand our way of life”.
Hunt fur seals, in fact, it has always been part of the lifestyle of the Inuit people. It is to this animal that the local inhabitants rely on for food, clothing and for the generation of an income. This is why the Greenlanders are turning to the deputies in order to finance an information campaign e counteract the anti-seal propaganda, in an effort to make their skins more attractive and restore exports to the levels they were at before the ban.
The main obstacle for hunters, in fact, is to overcome the image promulgated by animal welfare activists of defenseless baby seals. beaten to death on ice, as happens in Canada. International public outrage over the Canadian culling contributed greatly to the European moratorium.
Greenpeace also recognized this. In a Press release by the executive director of Greenpeace Canada, Joanna Kerr, published in Nunatsiaq News, the newspaper of Nunavut, home of the Inuit people, the official apology arrives:
“Our campaign has hurt many, both economically and culturally. Although directed against the commercial seal hunting, and not on a small scale, such as that of subsistence carried out by the indigenous and coastal peoples of the north, we have not always communicated this with sufficient clarity, and the consequences, although unintentional, have gone far beyond ”.
Inuit hunters also suffered heavily from the increasing effects of climate change. Rising ocean temperatures ranging from 1-2 degrees Celsius have eroded the sea ice, making the traditional method of hunting dangerous - a sled pulled by a pack of dogs. In some places the ice is so thin that it cannot bear the weight of the hunter and his dogs.
But there is an alternative, environmentalists say: the European Union could help and financially support hunters who are facing the poverty caused by the ban. And save the seals at the same time.
Roberta Ragni
Photo Credit
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