Namibia's seal hunting season begins amid war of words
Namibia’s annual seal hunting season started this week, over the protests of animal rights activists who say the practice is cruel.
The government accused the activists of “deliberately distorting information,” and said controlling the seal population was important for both the fishing industry and to the people who worked in jobs created by the hunt.
The sparsely populated southern African country is famous for its wildlife and desert scenes along its Atlantic coastline, known as the Skeleton Coast. The estimated 850,000 seals live on a group of islands off the southern coast.
The hunt started July 1 and runs for five months. The start follows an announcement by the government last week allowing for 6,000 adult males to be killed and upping the figure for pups by 20,000 from 2006 to 80,000.
The government argues the seals are consuming 900,000 tons of fish a year, more than a third of the fishing industry catch.
