Blonde By Nature

I love my country. However, my love does not blind me and a slap in the face keeps me from wearing rose-coloured glasses, especially when I find things like this:

Pond Inlet, Nunavut (near Baffin Island) has been a sad sight these last couple of weeks. Roughly 200 narwhals became trapped amongst thick sheets of arctic ice 17 kilometres from the town. The government has given the OK for the local Mittimatalik hunters to cull the creatures because they say it’s the most “humane way” to deal with them seeing as they would die a slow death anyways in humans didn’t intervene.

Here’s a couple Keith Pelley (department official) quotes taken from a CBC article, Killing Pond Inlet narwhals ‘humane harvest’

“If it’s possible to help the whales to get out of the predicament they’re in, we’d try that. But apparently the floe edge is so far away that the whales are very unlikely to be able to escape,”

“We don’t see any economical reason or any reason why the boat or ship should go there to cut out these whales….a ship would have to be sent up from southern Canada”

“There’s not a conservation concern with these whales being harvested.”

OH, but don’t worry because, “hunters will still have to attach hunting tags to every whale they kill, to monitor the number of whales taken.”

“The cull will not affect narwhal hunting quotas in Pond Inlet”

So that’s their side, here’s mine…

1. I sent an email to the DFO asking why they didn’t send icebreakers.

Kevin Hill, Communications Manager replied quickly (note, this is only sections of the email):

The option of sending an icebreaker to save the whales was looked at. Our scientists indicated, however, narwhals are particularly sensitive to noise and the engine noise from the ice breaker would stress the whales further and drive them deeper under the ice where they would drown. This would also preclude the whales from following the icebreaker out of the entrapment. Cutting a path out of the ice with other means is also impossible as open water is 50 kilometres away from the entrapment site.

Unfortunately, the realities of location and climate limit our options. A difficult decision had to made as to what was the most humane way to deal with this situation and the one to allow the local Inuit to harvest the whales was seen as the best given the limited options.

2. The ICUN Red List Of Threatened Species

3. Canadian Marine Environment Protection Society Report

Canada’s Narwhal Whale, A Species On The Edge.

4. DFO Underwater World: Narwhal

Quoted from the DFO website: The tusks command a high price on international markets. Narwhal, like other toothed whales, is listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), so trade in tusks requires an export permit. Tusks sold on the market in Canada must have special tags attached to indicate they were obtained legally in the course of an Inuit hunt. Measures and assessments such as these are designed to ensure narwhal hunts in northern Canada are sustainable, however, concern for the species has led the European Economic Community to ban the import of tusks into member states (tusks taken by the Inuit of Greenland are exempt).

LETS PUT THIS TOGETHER, SHALL WE?

FACT. So the narwhal is “near threatened” in 2008 according to the Red List.

FACT. In November 2004 the Canadian Marine Environment Protection Society did a 16-page report called the Narwhal “A Species On The Edge” reporting on the rapid decline of this species to the government.

FACT. In 2003 the quota for Narwhal killing in Pond Inlet, Nunavut was 130…roughly 1 YEAR prior to this report. It’s safe to conclude that the quota likely will have gone up a bit more than this despite the call to begin protecting the narwhals.

FACT. This culling of 200 is NOT going towards the 08/09 annual hunting quotas. This is a special case and this is scary.

FACT. Illegally killing and selling narwhal tusks STILL fetches a high price in the black market. AND legally killing and selling narwhal tusks, even with export permit, STILL fetches a high price. My point: the tusks are worth a lot. E.g. a skull of a whale with two tusks (a rarity) can fetch up to $90,000 in the global ivory market.

THE ELEPHANT AND THE NARWHAL (A Species on the Edge)
International outrage over the slaughter of elephants for their ivory tusks led to the 1989 inclusion of elephants in CITES. This protection led to an immediate drop in the market for elephant tusks.  But what was good for the elephant, was bad for the narwhal. Without any protection from trade, the whale tusk has simply replaced the elephant tusk in the global ivory market.

Why not add this massive slaughter to the hunting quota for the year? Also, is it not best to allow 100 out of the 200 survive the icebreaker stress/noise rather than just slaughtering them all because there is no “economical reason” to keep them alive? Can the government economically justify does saving a dog, whale, elephant, or human? Oh, but of course! There are “economical reasons” to slaughter them, their tusks are worth money!

I’d just like to point out that these issues extend far past every blogger’s/reporter’s/etc’s ability to google their way through government websites. And to be honest, I don’t think any ONE person can find out the total and absolute truth of this situation, but it’s safe to say that there’s something dirty going on here.

Don’t ya think?

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

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