by Mike Satchell
For the past 39 years, April 22 has marked the observance of Earth Day. It is an occasion to reflect on the wonders of our natural environment, on the health of our lands and oceans, on the state of our flora and fauna, and on our stewardship of the natural resources of this fragile planet.
On this day, we at The HSUS and Humane Society International naturally focus our thoughts on animals. While we join with environmental groups in celebrating the wondrous diversity of Earth’s wildlife, for us it is a day tinged with sadness—though not without hope.
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Once he's started to lose his white coat, a seal pup is a target for sealers. © 2008 The HSUS/Marcus Gyger |
It is our fervent wish that 2009 will be the final Earth Day when the ice floes off Canada's northeast coast—one of Earth's most spectacular habitats—are awash with blood from the world’s largest slaughter of marine mammals.
Up to 280,000 baby harp seals will be killed for their fur during this year’s seal hunt, which is now at its height. The carnage obscures the fact that seals being shot, clubbed, and skinned—many while still alive—are part of one of the animal kingdom’s most impressive natural phenomena—the great wildlife migrations.
Each spring, hundreds of thousands of Canada’s harp seals travel south to birth their pups, turning the coastal sea ice into a massive pinniped nursery. The newborns are pure white, but their fur quickly becomes mottled with dark patches.
After nursing for 10 days, the well-insulated pups start learning to swim, clumsily sliding across the ice and smoothly slipping into shallow pools. As adults, they will spend most of their lives in the water, but they are young still.
Elsewhere, other great migrations take place year round. Vast numbers of penguins march in winter to seek mates in Antarctica; millions of monarch butterflies turn the skies orange in central Mexico; huge herds of caribou transform Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into an American Serengeti. Tanzania’s Serengeti plains are the source of Africa’s greatest wildlife spectacle: millions of ungulates including wildebeest, zebra, eland, and Thomson’s gazelle follow a circular route from the veldt to Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve in the quest for water and fresh pastures.
The vast herds of the Serengeti are a moveable feast for the lion, leopard, cheetah, hyena, and other predators who travel with them. A world away in Canada today, human predators continue to arrive in boats and slaughter the baby seals resting on the ice floes. Unlike Africa’s Great Migration, there is nothing natural about this savagery; it feeds no one, restores balance to no ecosystem, and sustains no population except the merchants who turn the seal pelts into fashions for people who may or may not care about habitat preservation and a great wildlife migration.
This Earth Day, we remember the seals, and we hope that next year we will look out across the spectacular ice floes and see only the wonders of a thriving new generation. Please help the seals»
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Hong Kong actress Karen Mok visits a Canadian
harp seal nursery for the first time. © HSUS/2009 |
