Of seals and fish

Forest and Bird, Issue 265, 1 August 1992, Page 7

Of seals and fish

IT IS NO SECRET that Mrs Gro Harlem Brundtland, the prime minister of Norway, wants to be known as the "mother of the environment". In 1987, she headed the UN panel that wrote the influential Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland report, and she has continued to spread the gospel since. Earlier this year she told a world congress of trade unions that "sustainable development" meant "the exploitation of resources . . . consistent with present as well as future needs". It seems, however, that no one in Norway, present or future, needs seals. Even as Brundtland spoke, Norwegian vessels were steaming towards regions of the Arctic where harp and hooded seals bear their young. The Norwegians

killed 20,000 of the animals this season, despite warnings that the seal population is already down to only a sixth of its natural size and still falling. The Norwegians don’t even use the seals for anything. Since the European Community banned imports of sealskins, there is no market, and Brundtland’s government has to subsidise the seal killers. So why do they bother? Because what Norway does need is fish. Seals eat fish, so Norway says seals must be reduced to an "optimum" number to enable humans to continue exploiting declining fish populations. Source: New Scientist.