by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 05/98) - One of Canada's most outspoken naturalists is turning up the heat on the annual commercial seal hunt in Newfoundland and is criticizing the organization that speaks for Canadian Inuit for its position.

Author Farley Mowat, one of a number of public figures who lent their names to a national anti-sealing campaign last year, is now characterizing the Newfoundland hunt as a "government-sponsored holocaust."

Mowat has made headlines across Canada with his statements and in an interview with News/North last week, criticized the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada for not opposing the commercial hunt.

"I consider it a terrible thing that the Inuit Tapirisat was inveighed into supporting the mass seal slaughter in the gulf," he said from his Port Hope, Ont., home.

"They should oppose it, and oppose it for two reasons: one, it kills off a large proportion of harp seals, which are the same ones they depend on, and two, the Newfoundland hunt blackens their reputation and the image of fur."

Tapirisat representatives could not be reached for comment over the Christmas break.

Mowat and others involved in the International Fund for Animal Welfare's national campaign have repeatedly said that Inuit sealers are not a target of the campaign. But there are concerns in the North that if seal fur is associated with butchery, it will become harder to sell.

Activists make the distinction between the two hunts, noting that unlike the Newfoundland commercial hunters, Inuit use rifles and not clubs to kill adult animals only, and use the entire animal rather than just cutting off the penis for sale in Asia as an aphrodisiac and leaving the carcass on the ice.

Mowat is also criticizing the commercial hunters in Newfoundland for the number of animals that they waste, both through killing seals solely for the valuable penises and sloppy hunting practices, such as hunting the animals at ice edges, where he estimates that three of every four animals shot fall into the water and are not recovered.

As Newfoundland hunters sent a quarter-million hides to market last year, that would mean that a million seals were killed overall. Mowat stands by the estimate, although the sealing industry has already taken issue with it.

"When you are out there you can see the animal is hit and it will skitter off the edge of ice into the water," he said.

"A lot of the seals are thin at that time of year, so they just sink."

Mowat based his criticism on three trips with sealers and on conversations with seal-boat captains, who he says agree with the loss ratio.

Despite the attention his latest comments have received, Mowat said he had not changed his position on the hunt.

"I simply could not sit back and watch the holocaust, the war of extermination being carried on," he said.

"I'm on the side of the angels, or the side of the seals, and I don't care who else is there."