News of the North

Here at News of the North, we traditionally post a disparaging look at the seal hunt around this time every year. This brings us plenty of responses, both positive and negative, both thoughtfully considered and completely mindless:

Seal Pops they taste like Seal
Seal Pops they are made with Seal
Seal Pops they’re a real big deal
Seal Pops

Kenny the Shark

But one of the criticisms that’s frequently made about the anti-sealing protesters goes something like this: “It’s only because baby seals are so cute and cuddly, otherwise they wouldn’t care".

We’d hate to be hypocrites. So this year, we’re letting the seals fend for themselves, and we’ll tell you about some of the other, not-so-cute animals that are being hunted unnecessarily.

• Walruses aren’t cute. Non-Inuit sports hunters will pay up to $7,000 US for a chance to kill a walrus, which one travel writer from the New York Times called “a long boat ride to shoot a very large beanbag chair.". In 2006 the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife noted the the walrus’s status was raised to “special concern".
• Rattlesnakes aren’t cute. Rattlesnake roundups are common in New Mexico, Texas, and other states, despite the negligible effect that rattlesnake bites have on livestock and the environmental damage caused by the toxic chemicals and gasoline used to kill or collect the snakes.
• Sharks aren’t cute (not even you, Kenny). When sharks are caught and stripped of their fins (to be used in soups and medicines), they are often thrown back, alive, into the ocean, where they can no longer swim and are eaten to death by other fish. Despite its reputation as a miraculously healthy meal, shark fin soup actually contains dangerously high levels of mercury.

You can also learn more about the uglier faces of extinction, through environmental change as well as hunting, over at Endangered Ugly Things.

The North and South Poles will be represented in Baltimore this week, at the Arctic-Antartic summit. The earth’s poles are seen as the “canary in the coal mine” for climate change, giving us warnings and showing change before the rest of the planet. Some of the items to be considered include territorial claims and limiting tourism. The conference will be hosted by Hillary Clinton.

In the meantime, at the G20 summit in London, protesters set up a “climate camp” to protest carbon trading, which they see as an ineffective method of controlling climate change, as it does not effectively reduce greenhouse gases.

“The current economic model is based on infinite growth on an infinite planet, and to anyone with common sense that does not work.”

While the topic of climate change did arise at the G20 summit, the economic crisis was the real issue to be dealt with, and no action was taken on this growing environmental crisis. It is not until December that the UN Climate Change Conference will take place in Copenhagen.

In the meantime, the ice is melting faster.

You’ve probably heard about failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s brutal and bloodthirsty plan for aerial killing of wolves in her home state of Alaska. Her administration has actually paid hunters a bounty on wolves, since reducing the number of predators means there are more moose and caribou for hunters to kill - essentially turning Alaska into one big glorious vat of bloodshed and killing, never mind the cost to nature.

Defenders of Wildlife are pushing hard to outlaw aerial shooting of wolves, but the killing is already underway this season - please sign the petition to put an end to it as soon as possible.

Here in Canada, we have no right to judge when trophy hunters are freely killing black bears on Haida Gwaii. There is not much data on the actual number of bears living in the region, and no quota has ever been set. The Council of the Haida Nation passed a resolution over a decade ago calling for the end of recreational hunting of black bears on the Islands, but the final decision comes down to the British Columbia government.

Learn more about Taan (the bear) here, and sign this petition opposing the bear hunt. (One of the nice things about this petition, by the way, is that it suggests switching to sustainable bear viewing and ecotourism rather than trophy killing.)