Seal Cull

Author’s introduction for Seal Cull.

In October 1978 the Labour government of the day gave in to pressure from the fishing industry to mount a cull of grey seals in the Orkney Islands, one of the greatest concentrations of breeding grey seals in UK waters.  A Norwegian firm was contracted to shoot the seals on land, both pregnant cows and pups, and to remove the carcasses for commercial processing – mostly pet food.

Seal cull controversy was not new.  It had dogged the Farne Islands seal management plan for decades, and in the Gulf of St Lawrence, the annual Newfoundland cull of harp and hood seals for the fur trade was a well established and highly emotive conservation issue.  Only a year before, the same Norwegian firm had affected a cull in the remote and unpopulated Hebrides almost without incident.  The big difference this time was that Orkney is densely populated and there was the beginnings of a tourist industry based on wildlife.  It split the community: fishermen for it and just about everyone else against it.

Was it true that grey seals were costing the fishing industry £25 million a year?  Or, as it was claimed by Greenpeace, was it the fishing industry and the government trying to shift the blame for declining fish stocks onto seals?

I was commissioned by Penguin to find out.  This book is the result of ten years’ personal research into grey seals and it attempts to get to the facts of the debate, rather than dwell on the emotive issues that had raged for so long in the press.  Off I went to Orkney, to Aberdeen, to London to talk to those deeply involved.  I interviewed the leading conservationists and seal and fish biologists of the day, as well as the Fishermen’s Federations and local people.  For many years the book was used by Aberdeen University Zoology Department as a textbook for the political aspects of conservation biology. 

Extracts from the book:

Seal Cull - The Grey Seal Controversy - John Lister-Kaye

Introduction

In October 1978 a towering controversy arose in Britain over a government seal cull in the Orkneys. Seal cull rows are nothing new. The Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast, have known hot opposition to their management programmes for years, and in the Gulf of St Lawrence the annual cull of harp seals for their pelt meets with an international upsurge of feeling. So the public of the Western world is tuned in to seal hunting and to seals, even though most people on both sides of the Atlantic will only ever see a seal on television or in a zoo, and as far as they know, it will never conflict with their way of life. Why, then should this passionate interest exist?

The answers are not logical or clear, but it seems to have something to do with the singular fact that seals give birth to a helpless pup which is quite unprotected by a nest, burrow, vegetation or even camouflage. To add to this helplessness its mother is badly equipped to protect it. Also, it is covered in soft fur to keep it warm in a horrible climate, and our Western culture loves all things young, furry and helpless. What has added more than usual fuel to the 1978 Orkney controversy is a new issue brought to the already disapproving public's attention by the appearance of the Greenpeace Foundation. This international conservation group had already made a name for itself in a brave bid to stop the killing of whales on the verge of extinction. Along with their presence in the Orkneys, and their own very individual style of confrontation with the contracted hunters, came the very reasonable request for one year's halt on the cull because they doubted the adequacy of the scientists' figures which justified the killing.

The media caught on to this new twist to the old humanitarian argument with fervour. It made exciting reading and excellent television, and the public was immediately fed with copious and conflicting statistics and opinion. Within two weeks the story read like a thriller and the nation was captivated. There was a debate on it in the European Parliament in Brussels and it was clear that the affair was becoming an embarrassment to the Scottish Office, which had authorized the cull, and to the government at large.

On 16 October 1978, with some reluctance, Mr Bruce Millan, the Secretary of State for Scotland, announced that the programme had been halted because of public concern. The Norwegian seal hunting ship employed to do the work was signed off and sent home, and new, far smaller, proposals were put forward. Now everyone is asking where we stand. What is behind the allegations that the figures concerning seal populations and damage to fish stocks have been cooked to suit individual parties' interests? And what is the truth behind the pointed suggestion that the Scottish Office and its scientific advisers don't really know what they are doing?

All fundamental issues in a democracy are decided by public opinion, but in order for that opinion to be meaningful it must be based on some firm foundation of fact or experience. One of the most striking features of this controversy is the absence of accurate figures. At the moment the man on the street in Britain, and for that matter in most other countries on both sides of the Atlantic, is being forced into prejudice by the clumsy presentation of the evidence. This book attempts to present facts and arguments at variance in a straightforward manner in an endeavour to help the intelligent observer to make up his own mind.      

                                                      
Conservation is a principle which our world needs more and more as we continue to overcrowd and overpressure our fragile earth. The seal row is a conflict within conservation, and, for that reason, it is a crucial issue. More than ever before it is vital that the outcome of this controversy should be a rational and ordered solution for fish, man and seals. If it is permitted to become a sore of discontent the damage could be worldwide and pervasive. If the reader is looking for a clear-cut answer he will be disappointed; conservation is one of the most complex uncertainties in the history of man's relationship with his environment, and no author is in any position to produce clear-cut answers. Rather, it is hoped that by stimulating debate and reassessment of facts, motives and actions, at least the true issues will become clearer and better understood.

Conservation - Killing and Cruelty

P20 - P21

Since man first stepped out of the principal forest he has been a hunter and a fisherman. As well as his food he has needed wood for his fire, minerals for his tools and implements, and skins for his clothing. He still needs all these today, although along the way he has learned much about wise and unwise exploitation of the earth's resources, animal, vegetable and mineral. Farming was one of the first forms of conservation, because as man's population grew he realized that sooner or later he would run out of wild food plants and it was both practicable and necessary to help nature to produce sufficient for him. He was, for the first time, controlling his environment and managing its potential resource.  Before long, wild animals ventured out from the forest edge to sample the abundance of food plants growing in our primitive farmer's allotment. In anger and despair at the damge inflicted on his crop our hunter-farmer massacred the marauding animals by a concentrated hunt through the surrounding forest and he set traps for any foolish enough to venture back again. He had come into conflict with his fellow animals for the first time and he had to kill them not as a primary food source but as a control measure to protect his own livelihood.

For thousands of years the rapidly increasing numbers of men on earth have been driving the wild animlas back into the forests and felling trees to expand their food-growing area to meet the needs of a larger population of men. We are still doing it, and it is a relatively new concept of land and animal management even to allow wild things to exist at all in conflict with man's interests. We have almost passed through the dismal eras of total exploitation, when commercially valuable animals and plants and minerals were hunted, felled and dug up until there was nothing left. Now, in a new dawn of enlightenment comparable to that which shed light into the lives of those men who first thought of farming, we believe that not only should we live and let live a little, but that we should keep a close check on our wild animals to see that they do not get too scarce or too numerous, and on our wild habitats to ensure that there is enough space for the wildlife to exist in.

P27 - P28

What, then, is cruelty? Cruelty is a man causing unnecessary pain or suffering on anything, be it man or beast. It can be inflicted either by intent or default. It is just as cruel to beat a dog unnecessarily as to forget to feed it. If a bird with a broken wing lies unseen in the yard, no cruelty has taken place, but if a man comes along, sees it suffering, and does nothing about it, then he is guilty of cruelty by default. Humane killing - killing quickly and efficiently with the best intention to avoid suffering - is not cruelty. It is the opposite. The proposal to kill seal pups humanely is no more cruel than the proposal to take lambs to the slaughterhouse. The standards carefully laid down for both are quite devoid of cruelty, as will be seen in a later chapter. An element of suffering may creep into any kiling operation and it should be guarded against, but even so, unless the human responsible is intentionally negligent, he cannot be held to be guilty of cruelty.These facts are straightforward and basic, but unfortunately they are not commonly understood, as our public opinion researchers have revealed, and at a glance at the correspondence columns of the national press during the controversy will endorse.

In the light of this, any newspaper, radio or television authority or any society or association which has deliberately allowed public emotion to be stirred by the suggestion that the control measures proposed by the Seals Advisory Committee are cruel, is guilty of irresponsible interference and ignorance. Anyone bothering to read the humane recommendations and standards which have been in existence for many years, and the research which went into their compilation, will quickly discover that this aspect of the exercise has been most commendably covered. And it is acutely relevant that the Chairman of the Seals Advisory Committee, Lord Cranbrook, is also responsible for such pertinent legislation as the Animal Cruel Poisons Act, which provides for the humane destruction of rats, for instance, at a time when the public could not have cared less how a rat died. 

Consequently because I believe that such sentimentalism has no place in the rational examination of this sort of conservation issue, I have intentionally withheld mention of and organizations seen to be openly parasitic upon the public intellect in this way. On the other hand the all-important humanitarian standpoint is adequately and responsibly represented by the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (because it is essentially a Scottish problem).  Few of us would be slow to admit that the killing in cold blood of young and helpless animals of any kind, but especially animals as appealing in appearance as seal pups, is anything but distasteful and a task many people would not be able to bring themselves to perform. Discussing this recently with a scientist who has contributed greatly to our knowledge of seal population dynamics, I was told that, despite his keen interest in the programme, after several years of having to kill adult and young seals alike for scientific examination, he found it more and more degrading, so that finally he became sickened and left the field of seal research altogether.

Nevertheless, the unfortunate fact remains that the issue was won by the use of the weight of sympathetic opinion much of which was swayed only by the heavy sentimentalism seals attract. Although in this case the result may not have been wrong, it is a bad principle that an important conservation issue should be so affected by uninformed opinion. It can only make future seal control programmes here in Britain and elsewhere more difficult. It may also affect the rationale of other important decisions. But is does make it quite clear that good public relations is a vital exercise for government and independent bodies alike.

 Reviews

‘The grey seal controversy is objectively investigated by John Lister-Kaye in Seal Cull (Penguin, 95p) from a tangled mass of scientific papers, statistics and speculation. It is essential reading for anyone interested in man’s relationship with wildlife the world over’. 

Evening Advertiser
Swindon
6 Sept 1979

‘The serious business of conservation can only benefit from such a reasoned and balanced inquiry. You can love seals and still appreciate this book’

Evening Post-Echo Ltd
Hemel Hempstead, Herts
15 September 1979

‘Written with authority, the book - which includes some very appealing photographs - lets the reader make up his own mind. Anyone interested in our natural environment will appreciate this book’   

East Kilbride News
19 October 1979

‘in Seal Cull: The Grey Seal Controversy (Penguin: Harmondsworth, UK; 95 pence), John Lister-Kaye has come close to providing an account which is fair to both sides.
Lister-Kaye has provided a first class documentary of the grey seal fishery issue in which he has systematically presented the information in a form which is useful to statesman, politician, scientist, fisherman, conservationist and interested layman alike. He writes not as a completely detached observer and is not afraid to state his own opinion on main issues and attribute blame or praise where he thinks fit’

Nature
6 December 1979

‘This “Environment Special” is a fairly scholarly investigation into the grey seal controversy. The author’s painstaking efforts to examine the problem objectively are admirably presented in this clear, patient style. Mr Lister-Kaye is careful to define precisely such terms as “conservation” and “cruelty”, and his investigation into the reasons for the massive wave of public reaction to the culling of seals in the Autumn of 1978 sheds interesting light on modern Man’s relationship with his environment’.

Natterjack Wildlife Review ~ Readers Guide
Feb 1980