Depends: Whose Seal?

"The Commission has constantly indicated that there are no reasons to be concerned about the conservation status of seals. [No] Article of the EC Treaty could be used as a legal basis for the adoption of the proposal."
European Union 2009 legal opinion

When the politicians who collectively make decisions in the name of the European Union tasked their legal department to review their intention to bring in a ban on imported seal products in 2009, the response wasn't quite to their agenda. But that didn't stop them, in any event, and although there was no legal basis for the ban to be instituted under the EU's common competition rules, the emotional vulnerability of EU members upset by the propaganda issued by groups championing a ban, ruled the day.

When Canada protested and went to the World Trade Organization asking them to adjudicate in the matter, the WTO in turn was unimpressed by the case the EU made for justification for their ban; no WTO rules existed that would support it. However, they ruled that even while the ban effectively undermined international trade obligations, it was nonetheless seen to be justified under "public moral concerns". The European public was excited to emotional distress.



Celebrity activism has that kind of effect on people. What happens to animals in abattoirs where they are dispatched to a dismal end to satisfy the palates of Europeans is beyond sight and thus simply irrelevant as a matter of weighty comparison. The sordid and often brutal dispatch of animals-for-meat can be viewed through quite a number of screenings meant to shock people into demanding a more enlightened practise, but it hits too close to the dinner table for most to really care.

The Government of Canada will undoubtedly appeal that World Trade Organization ruling too. It has been a long uphill battle to attempt to refute the slanderous accusations that baby seals are clubbed without human compassion, their white pelts skinned off them while they're still struggling and alive. Though this may on occasion have been a wretchedly unfortunate part of the seal hunt, hunting baby seals has been outlawed since 1987.

The French conservationist Jacques Cousteau once observed that seal hunt opposition is pure emotional outlet. "We have to be logical. We have to aim our activity first to the endangered species. Those who are moved by the plight of the harp seal could also be moved by the plight of the pig -- the way they are slaughtered is horrible."

A report issued by the Independent Veterinarians Working Group released in August of 2005 stated they had reached the conclusion that a hakapik strike to the seal's skull, while having an obvious appearance of stark brutality to an onlooker, the method represents a humane method of killing, causing immediate loss of consciousness. The hakapik is the traditional weapon used by Inuit hunting and slaughtering seals for the table and for clothing.

According to government estimates in Canada some 6.9-million Atlantic harp seals representing three times 1970s numbers are thriving in the Atlantic. The industry harvested roughly 91,000 seals in 2012, representing far fewer than allocated through the federal quota of 400,000. Furthermore, there is growing pressure emerging from the fishing lobby representing various European countries, eager to cull the Harp seal population to conserve fishing stock of cod and salmon.
 

Fisheries and Oceans Canada states how closely monitored and regulated the Canadian seal hunt is to ensure enforcement of humane treatment of the seals: "a highly mobile enforcement team maintains a presence on the ice floes 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout the sealing season, with the assistance of the Canadian Coast Guard and the support of local police forces." Fines, seizure of equipment or a ban on further hunting represent forms of punishment for violators.

Fishermen and fish farms in Scotland and Denmark have been given waivers to shoot seals to diminish the numbers threatening their fish harvest. The hunters are discreet, engaging in the hunt with great secrecy to protect them from animal rights campaigners' unwanted attention. In addition to which the European Parliament's reform of common fisheries policy has called as well for an investigation into fish stocks reduction resulting from natural predation from sea lions, seals and cormorants.

They are looking into formulation of a management plan "to regulate these populations". Sounds more than a little like outright hypocrisy.

Fastidious Females

Neanderthals are those individuals and they are legion in any society, who prefer to grudgingly live in a state of intolerance with others among them in a pluralist society. They are constantly aggrieved, combative, irritatingly patriarchal in their attitudes, exhibiting miserable temperaments. They're the truculent miseries one would prefer not to live next to in a neighbourhood.

A throwback to a primitive era when Homo Sapiens lived alongside, but didn't much concern themselves with those sub-humans called Neanderthals.

Neanderthals butchered animals, made tools and gathered round the fire in different parts of their caves.Photo: AFP 

 

So wasn't there a comeuppance not that long ago when science and paleoarchaeology revealed that those low-browed, hulking, hairy sub-humans were possessed of a larger brain -- ostensibly for reasoning -- than their slighter, more humanly-advanced cousins, Homo Sapiens Sapiens... There appears also to be some scuttlebutt of a truly irritating quality that they had concerns and motivations and appreciations that should really be the purview of fully human creatures.

And now, the humiliating news that Neanderthals had a sense of aesthetics, and of the utility of basic hygiene practices. Oh, and a practical sense as well. Recent excavation of a Northern Italy cave where Neanderthals were said to have lived led to the discovery that they arranged their living areas for particular purposes. Their caves, in other words, were designed purposefully to have specific areas for meal preparations and for sleeping, and never the twain did meet.

Archeologists excavate Neanderthal levels at Riparo Bombrini in northwest Italy.
Credit: Fabio Negrino

Sharp-edged weapons and culinary objects were kept well away from possible casual contact to avoid accidents. Fires were lit for warmth and comfort at the back of the cave so the heat would circulate (and doubtless the suffocating smoke particles) throughout the cave, finally ventilating at its opening. And the areas where sleeping took place were void of the detritus and waste that might accumulate through the butchering of game meant to please the savage palate.

But it's true enough, these findings by Professor Julien Riel-Salvatore of the University of Colorado-Denver, and published in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology, that areas for working and preparing food were maintained quite separately from sleeping areas. "Instead of Neanderthals just discarding artifacts everywhere, there was some kind of pattern in terms of where they did their activities", he explained.

"The distribution seems to have followed some kind of logic. We see that stone tools are found to be concentrated towards the outside, so that sharp pieces of stones wouldn't injure them. Most animal bones also seem to be concentrated outside the shelter. They are segregating activities so as not to have rotting bones inside." Obviously, the early civilizing attempts by female Neanderthals on their hunting spouses.

"We often get a sense that before Homo Sapiens there's some kind of qualitative difference in behaviour among prehistoric humans. This ability to organize has been seen as a key difference. Well, this study is chipping away at the preconception that Neanderthals were just like another species of large primates, rather than modern humans", explained Professor Riel-Salvatore.

Who's to blame for 196 million dead birds: Your killer cat

Stouffville, Ontario, is a kind of bedroom community of Toronto. A relatively short drive from point A to point B. It's an historic farming community. A place where a week-end flea market took place and residents of Toronto would drive over to see what was on offer. Like pigeons? fanciers sell them there. And baskets of fresh-picked apples, pears, corn. Baked goods, too. Or you can pick up some really excellent framed prints, or oil paintings. Even a set of kitchen pots and pans, stainless steel, at a really good price. Pottery, and dinnerware. Jams, jellies.

At least you could, when we lived there forty years ago. In Toronto, that is. We'd visit Stouffvile, with our young children in tow, driving up to Stouffville, making our lean household budget go just a little farther, and being right royally entertained at the same time. Because you'd never know what you might find there, the following week; always surprises, quite delightful. Toronto has expanded exponentially since that time. Now, there's kind of a mysterious and troubling situation being experienced in Stouffville lately, according to the latest news.

York Regional Police, responsible for patrolling the region north of Toronto, have released information relating to a one-month period where locals have discovered severed cat heads in public places. Six of them. No signs of blood, no damage to the heads. Police don't believe this is the result of predatory animals. No one has sighted the related bodies, just the heads. Last winter we came across the precise opposite, close to where we now live. A grey squirrel frozen fast on a winter trail in the woods, as though arrested in mid-scurry, tail erect, front paws and back in the act of forward-motion.

Only, it was a very chilling, sinister tableau. No blood in evidence there, either. The squirrel -- and it could have been one that we'd seen often before, since it's an area we daily use for recreational purposes, leaving peanuts for the squirrels to help them survive the long cold winters -- was in perfect shape, other than that it was missing its head. It was a grisly, upsetting scene, and we wondered whether a raccoon might have been responsible. Living in Toronto years ago and keeping pigeons, we'd seen how raccoons did just that with the pigeons, reaching into the coop to pull the bird's head toward them.

But in Stouffville, they don't believe this is what has been happening. "What's of great concern to us is the pattern of it. Six incidents all similar in nature; that's what's alarming to us", said Const. Pattenden in the company of Ontario SPCA officer Brad Dewer. "It's absolutely atrocious, a human being who does that", said a local resident, Connie Sima, owner of a few cats herself. "My daughter texted me and said 'You'd better go put your cats in the house", she said. "I don't know where they came from [the cat killers] but I wish they would leave."

"They say you start with the wings of a fly", says Peter Archibald, living close to where two cat heads were discovered. "Then ants, then mice, and then cats, and what's next?" He was expressing a fear of some residents, who feel whoever has done this may not confine his predations to cats. Six cats roamed his area a year ago, he said, now only one is left. "All the songbirds are back ... blue jays and cardinals and mourning doves. And there are lots more squirrels again."

Bingo.

Achieving Status

Women who 'marry well', often achieve a large-scale social status and celebrity because they become the official consorts to royalty and the public imagination celebrates the ages-old phenomonon of a commoner, a woman endowed with beauty and intelligence capturing the heart of a powerful man who sweeps her off her feet and into a marriage in which her presence will enhance his presentation, and a dynasty is born -- or continued on its way.

Folk tales and fairytales that children, mostly girls, traditionally consumed in their formative years had more than ample stories of beautiful young woman and their ravishing princes, most ending happily ever after. But not necessarily. That these events occur in real life is undeniable, and there exist many examples from Middle Eastern rulers like King Hussein of Jordan and his son after him wedding beautiful and accomplished women.

Even Hollywood comes into the picture with former actress Grace Kelly marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco, the world's smallest principality. And famously, one actress thought to be one of the world's great beauties, Rita Hayworth, apart from marrying countless times, also counted among her serial husbands, Prince Aly Khan, son of Sultan Mahommed Shah, Aga Khan II, leader of Shia Islam's Ismaili sect.

A London-raised, Sunni Syrian career woman caught the eye of the heir to the tyranny of Syria, and yet another beautiful young woman was carried away to represent as the consort of a powerful man. Asma al-Assad's father, a wealthy London-based surgeon, came from Homs, his ancestral home. She married a Shia Muslim man whose father was well known to have inflicted a bloody massacre upon Sunnis in Hama.


Homs is considered by the Alawite regime of Asma's husband to be a nest of terrorist enemies of the state. And the wife of the new butcher of Syria is accepting of the fact that she is now part of a government which has exacted revenge upon its citizens for protesting their inequality in their country of birth and citizenship by dispatching helicopter warships to strafe civilians, and by using artillery to bomb them.



The wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad now portrays herself in a public relations gambit as the gracious host to their faithful, grateful public, mostly comprised of Shiite Muslim Syrians. She is seen modestly ingratiating herself with ordinary people to demonstrate to them and to the world at large that she and her husband and their murderous regime are really concerned for the well-being of the citizens of Syria.

The revolt that is taking place is not of their liking, nor of their making. They nobly respond as best they can, including, needless to say, with the use of the military -- for what else is a nation's military for but to defend the government and the nation -- from the predatory viciousness of foreign Islamists who have entered the war-torn country from Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, to destabilize and disrupt civil life in their country.

For their pains and as reward for their love of country last month the presidential convoy returning from an Eid celebration was attacked by rebels whose boldness knows no bounds or decency. The president and first lady escaped unscathed, while a bodyguard was killed. This outrage is, to their way of thinking, indefensible. An affront to decency. No way to honour a couple who have given their all for their country.



And so, there are those who have imagined a response to this significant affront to majesty and decency out of a sense of outrage so emotional that it exceeded the bounds of forethought and consequences. Where President Assad's brother Maher, commander of the Republican Guards and of the Fourth Armoured Division devised a revenge attack. A vendetta against the crude violence threatening the president and his wife, by the responding use of chemical weapons.

Nerve agents used in bombs that rained down on a Damascus suburb that represented a stronghold of the Syrian rebels. Deadly gas that crept in silently in the small hours of the night to suffocate and to cause untold suffering and finally death. A rage that could not be appeased other than by a swift and direct response that would bring a huge death toll. The message delivered; to Syrian rebels that a price will be exacted for such boldness of purpose.

To the world at large that the regime will not tolerate the endangerment of its president and its first lady, let alone their precious, vulnerable, innocent children. Now, threatened by the very real prospect of international intervention to halt the atrocities mounted by the government against its own population, millions of Syrians have fled their homes in terror.

They have been preyed upon by both their government and the jihadists who have entered the country to wrest control from the Alawites to transfer it to Sunni fanatics.

The Assads are isolated, friendless but for Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. No other Arab country wishes them well. Their list of enemies has proliferated wildly. Asma al-Assad's first concern is for the welfare of her children, offspring of her marriage to their father, the totalitarian, murderous tyrant of Syria.

She has come far from the genteel upbringing she experienced in London, from the university education she had there, from the comfort of a wide circle of friends and admirers. And the affirming, concerned presence of her doting parents, ex-diplomat mother Sahar, cardiologist Fawaz Akhras.

"There was this hope that we had a young couple with strong UK ties that maybe we could push in the direction of the Jordanian royal family, where they all go to Harrow and Sandhurst", said Harry Hogger pensively, Britain's former ambassador to Syria, of the formerly graduate of the Western Eye Hospital in London.

 Animals and their Possessors

"There's an awful lot of animals in there. It's kind of cluttery inside so it makes it difficult to do this safely. We don't want these animals. We're just helping out."
Bry Loyst, Indian River Reptile Zoo, Ontario

A lot of experts in the field of reptile zoo management are helping out. They know how best to handle snakes, crocodiles, alligators and other creatures that should be left where nature has placed them. Alternately, taken to zoos where zookeepers are skilled and practised in tending to their needs. Canada's Accredited Zoos and Aquariums, the single nationally recognized body in the country granting zoo accreditation, stated that Reptile Ocean' owner Jean-Claude Savoie had never requested accreditation.

The New Brunswick Natural Resources Department had no idea that a python was being kept in an apartment. The Reptile Ocean's owner may never have asked for accreditation, knowing it would be denied him. Or he simply thought that it was unnecessary, a complication in his business life he could dispense with. Because possibly he felt he was sufficiently knowledgeable and therefore assured that nothing would ever go awry.

"There are quite a few animals here", said Bruce Dougan, manager of the Magnetic Hill Zoo in Moncton, N.B. He was also there, at the request of the province's Natural Resources Department. To aid in the identification and removal process. Particularly of the sixteen animals the shop hadn't acquired permits for, to make their accommodation there perfectly legal. Mr. Dougan identified four large American alligators, six crocodiles, some tortoises, turtles and snakes.

Preliminary autopsy results on the corpses of of four-year-old Noah Barthe and his six-year old brother Connor, found dead in an apartment above the Reptile Ocean store, confirmed death by asphyxiation. A 45-kilogram African rock python had escaped its glass enclosure located in the room next to where the little boys were sleeping. The snake had made its way into the ventilation system, but its weight had collapsed the ceiling, dropping it into the room the children occupied that night.

According to those in the know, African rock snakes bite prey before constricting their bodies, damaging muscle tissue and causing cardiac arrest, and finally death, before swallowing the victim; and that snake was of a sufficient size to do just that. A casual letter-to-the-editor commenter who had personal experience living in Zambia as a member of its Wildlife Conservation Society, had what appears to be the best explanation yet.

Derek Wilson of Port Moody, British Columbia wrote: "I expect the inquest into the tragedy in Campbellton, N.B. will find that the boys were not strangled by the snake twining around them. Instead, I think that the snake simply curled up on top of one boy, seeking to share his body heat (snakes are cold-blooded creatures). The weight of the snake on the boy's chest could have caused asphyxiation and prevented the boy from calling out or fleeing. With this source of warmth extinguished, the snake may have moved to the other sleeping boy, where the same tragic circumstances could have played out."

Makes sense; no bite marks appear to have been found, the boys may not have been crushed through constriction; the snake merely did what nature equipped it to do as part of its autonomic survival instinct; find a source of warmth to comfort itself. What makes no sense entirely is that the owner of these exotic animals felt quite confident that whatever he was doing was just fine and dandy.



The mother of the two little boys had enjoyed posting photographs on her Facebook account of her two little boys; handling snakes comfortably, cleaning out a huge glass aquarium used to house reptiles, obviously feeling she was exposing them to a valuable appreciation for wildlife. But that's just the problem; they are 'wild' life, and we are domesticated life, and the two do not go together all that well, sometimes occasioning tragedy.

Cleaning: The brothers, with a third child, pictured cleaning out a reptile enclosure believed to have housed the python which killed them

"The World's Last Great Forest"

"The wave of development pushing north through Canada's boreal forest leaves, in its wake, an expanding list of impacted species and widespread degradation of eco-system services."
"Older recommendations -- that setting aside 10% - 20% of a region's land base would be sufficient to maintain a region's biodiversity and ecological processes -- are now known to reflect major underestimates."
"To maintain ecological processes and the full complement of wildlife species, at least 50% of an ecosystem or broad-scale landscape should be incorporated into a network of conservation areas that are free of industrial disturbance."
Such conservation initiatives "should accommodate Aboriginal traditional uses of the land and should be managed or co-managed by Aboriginal governments...enshrined in civil institutions" to ensure that environmental commitments "cannot be changed to accommodate short-term political pressures and sensitivities."
The International Boreal Conservation Science Panel

Canada's 5.8-million square kilometre reach of northern woods and wetlands, the country's priceless natural resources comprised a topic of immense importance and discussion at the opening day of a global international conference of ecological scientific researchers taking place in Baltimore this week. Their considered recommendation was for a target of protection of 50% of vulnerable natural environment.


To be set aside in perpetuity, to be protected by careful management for the purpose of preserving -- including possible restoration to its original integrity -- of that immense land mass. The report that the International Boreal Conservation Science Panel released to the conference was titled "the world's last great forest". Canada's huge boreal forest land mass is described as "one of the world's greatest natural treasures".

It ranks along with the Siberian boreal forest and the Amazon rainforest as among the last three significant areas of Earth's forested land, "never ... touched by the large-scale footprint of human industrial expansion". Pristine, natural, raw and vulnerable. Vulnerable because of encroaching forestry, mining and energy projects across the country. And they include Alberta's oil sands. All of which transform immense tracts of the boreal frontier.

PHOTO: Leah Hennel 

Bear 126, a male grizzly bear, bolts up a steep hillside at the last second as a train rushes by in the Bow Valley
And as they do, they impact on all the life that is supported by the boreal forest. Destroying wildlife habitat, disrupting ancient migration patterns long established by the animals who make their home there, and as well, threatening water quality. The end result -- a potential disruption and compromising of the entire ecosystem. This frightening potential is what the panel warns must be avoided at all costs.

According to the researchers, about one-eighth of the total of Canada's boreal forest -- some 730,000 square kilometres -- is "already affected by these industries and their infrastructure", inclusive of roads and hydroelectric dams. The woodland caribou "have disappeared from the southern tier of the boreal forest". Wolverine, grizzly bear and wolf are also in threat of ecological disruption.

"It has become apparent that substantially more habitat protection than previously recognized is needed."

Beware The Ordinary

"I had some personal hard days. But the main worry was how I was going to deal with my family. There was one day and one of the doctors said he heard circulation in my hand and that they were going to possibly be able to save my hand."
Christine Caron, Ottawa

Imagine the impossible. Bereft of all your limbs how would you, how could you possibly manage pedestrian things of everyday life. As a quadriplegic you would be entirely dependent on others to perform the most simple tasks that able-bodied people -- which is most people -- never give a second thought to. How would you get out of bed in the morning? Wash yourself. Prepare a meal. Earn a living. Travel anywhere. Much less look after your four children. And the home you share with them as a single mother.

Surely, at age 46, this kind of thinking would rate as bizarrely twisted. Why would anyone give something so completely unbelievable a second thought? Unless they were threatened with the loss of their legs, their arms, their clever hands. Left with a torso and all the intelligence remaining quite intact in their practical heads. You are informed, through no one's fault, that you must prepare to lose mobility, capability, independence.

Your legs and your arms must be amputated. To save your life. You might think: what life? What is there left of life if you cannot do anything but think, see, hear, and feel. And you would feel utterly dreadfully hopeless. Christine Caron was playing a tug of war game with two of her four dogs on the 18th of May. Her three-year-old Shih Tzu, manoeuvring for a better grip grazed her knuckle.

"It didn't seem like a big deal" she said in an interview. How many of us having sustained a slight injury have experienced the instant interest of our pet dogs in the site. They immediately offer to make it better, to lick the wound clean. But clean is a relative concept; the saliva on the soothing tongue that licks the blood off the wound comes complete with a bacteria common to dogs called Capnocytophaga canimorsus.

It rarely causes infection in humans. The Public Health Agency of Canada declares this type of infection to have been reported roughly 200 times worldwide since 1976. In Christine Caron's case, a few days after her knuckle was scratched by her little dog, and licked 'clean' by her three other dogs, "I went to bed on May 21 and I don't remember anything after that". For a month and a half she knew nothing, since she was in a coma.

Soon after awakening from the coma doctors informed her of the need to amputate her limbs. All four would have to be taken. But then one of the surgeons informed her they could save one of her arms, and her hand, her right hand. She is re-learning how to use that hand at the Ottawa Hospital Rehabilitation Centre. "It was like a -- I don't know -- it was like the moment that I decided that this was going to be it and we were going to do it and there's no question, it has to happen."

She lost her employment with the National Research Council two years earlier, and has no private insurance to pay for the prosthetic limbs she will require, let alone the refitting of her home to accommodate her new realities. A fundraising drive has been launched on her behalf with the goal of raising $100,000.

fundrazr.com "Caring for Chris"

Exporting Honour

"There is no way he would be putting the public in danger. He knows what he's doing. Dr. Nielsen is a very experienced scientist. He's not a bioterrorist."
John Prescott, professor of pathobiology and animal health, University of Guelph

Is there a legitimate case? Is it possible that someone who has been a renowned researcher in his profession, acknowledged and decorated for his expertise and leading research, would be so casually crass as to throw it all away, and live with his conscience knowing that his surrender to an impulse to gain a handful of yuan at the expense of his reputation could bring him to moral ruin?

A Canadian scientist who was a leading expert in his field with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, treating his profession, his reputation and his future with such incredible disregard? If this is true it is difficult to understand. But then human nature and the events that bring us to our own personal states of misery and despair are undecipherable even to ourselves, much less onlookers.

Apprehended months ago, back on October 24, planning to embark on a flight to China, Klaus Nielsen, one of the world's leading experts on the infectious brucella bacteria, charged with attempting to smuggle 17 vials of the pathogen to China. China is well known through its investment in industrial espionage to favour such short-cuts.

And it is part and portion of the human condition that if determined recruiters are patient enough eventually they will be successful in persuading the most surprisingly well inoculated minds against such probes and attempts at corrupting long-held values, cultural and social mores, patriotic attachments, to find success.

That link that led this man to betray the trust placed in him to ensure the secure and safe holding of national policies and formulae and organisms entrusted to him may have been another former CFIA scientist, Wei Ling Yu, whose allegiance to his adopted country may have been trumped by a switch in allegiance to a country of his heritage.

Both are now said to have been engaged in "unlawful efforts to commercialize intellectual property" held in ownership by the Government of Canada and its agency. Both scientists are charged with breach of trust by a public official. Professor Nielsen faces as well charges under the Export and Import Permits Act, the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act and the Human Pathogens and Toxins Act.

The brucellosis vials he was in possession of en route to the Ottawa airport were not his to dispose of, much less to profit by. As an integral member of a scientific team winning a CFIA Technology Transfer Award in 2003 for the development of a 15-second test for detecting brucellosis in cattle, he has, in one fell and foul swoop, surrendered his soul to acquire renminbi.

Where will he now be enabled to hold his head high in pride at his accomplishments?