The Dangers of The Commercial Seal Trade
The history of wildlife conservation has shown that the commercial trade in dead animals, or their parts, is impossible to regulate, and usually leads to disaster for the hunted species. Harp and hooded seals are no exception.
- they are relatively long-lived mammals,
- they reproduce in large groups,
- females bear only one offspring each year, and
- controlling hunting of these species is complicated by the fact that they are commercially hunted in both Canada and Greenland, countries with very different management strategies.
The trade in animal parts - a recipe for
disaster.
The trade in animal parts is notoriously difficult to regulate. The trade in seal penises as aphrodisiacs generated a large black market for seal organs. The result: hundreds of seals killed through illegal poaching, and "highgrading," where seals are killed solely for their penises and the rest of the animal is discarded without being recorded in the catch statistics. Another difficulty with the animal parts trade is known as the 'lookalike' problem. For example, one study found that penises taken illegally from endangered animals were being sold in the market as legal seal penises.
Finally, history also shows us that once legal (and illegal) markets are established for wildlife parts, they cannot be easily legislated away, even when a species becomes endangered. In fact, as an animal becomes more rare in the wild, the market price for its parts will be driven even higher, giving poachers even greater incentive to kill more animals.
If anything is to be learned from a century of 'wildlife management,' it is that encouraging the trade in seal parts will lead to unsustainable hunting practices, and threaten seal populations worldwide.
One of the results of the commercial seal hunt is "highgrading." This seal was killed solely for its penis, its body was left on the ice to rot. Photo © IFAW.
