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IWMC
World Conservation Trust |
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Editorial: Seal Skins
are Back!
by Larry Simpson
Department of Sustainable Development
Government of Nunavut
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Prices for Nunavut ring seals reached an all-time high at
the North Bay fur auction in December-averaging $67, up from a similar record of
$46 last year. For some years this writer has been in attendance at these
auctions, to meet and monitor, and to hand over an incentive award of an Inuit
soapstone carving to the highest-value purchaser of Nunavut sealskins. Well,
judging by the competitive bidding on just over 6,000 ring seal skins offered,
the carving was not really needed. And, the selling price was dramatically
higher than the $30 fixed-price our Wildlife Officers have been paying out to
Inuit hunters since the market for sealskins collapsed as a result of the
anti-sealing agenda. These are nice problems to have, and adjustments will be
made accordingly. We are in the process of purchasing sealskins, to set aside
the fixed-price system and once again link price to skin quality and anticipated
demand. Time for the government to pull back a bit and give some room to market
forces.
What a boost for our hunters! An economic boost, and more importantly, a
psychological boost for a people with new hope for the common sense of people
south-of-60 to use a bountiful renewable resource in a sustainable way, one that
can also support people in remote locations and provide an alternative to
limited wage-employment opportunities.
The Government of Nunavut of course cannot take full-credit for the
rebounding sealskin prices, as they reflect the complexities of changing public
and consumer attitudes, the nuances of fashion, and worldwide supply and demand
factors. One thing though, the Inuit and the government refused to give up on
seals, recognizing the tremendous economic, cultural, and social importance of
sealing for their survival as a people. The Nunavut Sealing Strategy was
introduced to maintain sealing as an environmentally-responsible means of
helping Inuit hunters finance the rising costs of subsistence-harvesting, and to
show the "southern" public how sealing helps to preserve diversity in
people and cultures. This Strategy includes the sealskin purchase program and
participation in the North Bay auction, market and product development
(including a new Nunavut Inuit Collection of fashion sealskin coats premiered
each year at the Montreal fur show, public education/public relations, and
northern business development in the fur sector. Principles regulating the Inuit
seal hunt are sustainable use, humane harvesting, and use of the whole animal.
Selling the seal skin, a byproduct of the food-driven harvest, is a means of
ensuring full use.
Besides being functional and beautiful, sealskins also serve as a useful
weathervane for the fortunes of the sustainable use of wildlife in general. When
one considers that seals are at the center of one of the decisive ideological
battlegrounds between the forces of "sustainable use" and "no
use", and that so much is at stake in terms of funding and credibility for
a number of animal rights groups (particularly IFAW), this is no mean feat.
Seals are not just a flesh and blood creature any more (and their numbers by the
way make sustainable harvesting a non-issue), but a metaphor, and an icon. IFAW
still insists on using the emotive-image of the whitecoat Harp seal pup for
funding and misinformation purposes. That it has been illegal for many years to
harvest whitecoat Harp seals in the Newfoundland hunt, and that only adult Ring
seals are harvested in Nunavut by rifle, apparently cannot be readily
assimilated or recognized by these groups. Sadly, this lack of intellectual
integrity and of basic human fairness has hurt the environmental movement as a
whole, when it is still much-needed. What happens when people realize that seals
are not really an issue, but in fact a good model of humankind in nature? This
debacle goes way beyond just crying wolf. 
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