1 JANUARY 1983, Page 17

Culling for conservation

Michael Wigan

t has become almost an autumn tradi-

tion, a perennial seashore drama fought in the far-off hinterlands — the confronta- tion of Orcadian fishermen culling seals and crusading conservationists. The seal cull in the Orkneys has become a mirror for all conservation issues. The embers of the public outcry caused in 1979, when Norwegians were imported to do the cull, are annually fanned to life by bizarre publicity stunts. But the more respectable conservationists shrink in horror from be- ing identified, as they inevitably are, with mobs of agitators from `Greenpeace' or the `Sea Shepherds'. Many of them think the cull is too small.

Far from being an endangered species (which it is still listed as), the grey seal population, largely Scottish, is rapidly ex- panding. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) estimates a growth rate of 4 per cent since 1977; less conservative estimates say 7 per cent. NERC calculates the total population at 82,500 in 1981 rising to a predicted 87,000 in 1982. In the days before the first war when crofters used all parts of the seal (skin for boots and coats, meat for eating, oil for burning in lamps) the seal population drop- ped to 5,000. The annual seal-killing was as much an annual event as disrupting the cull is now.

The anti-cull lobby dexterously mixed unrelated seal culls in the public mind. Canadian hunters clubbing harp seal pups for their valuable white coats were confused with British fishermen shooting grey seal weaned `moulters' (month-olds), whose white coat is valueless, for their skin. The seal acquired an image of defenceless in- nocence, although it can be a huge and ferocious carnivore: 850-pound bull seals fighting are not a sight for the squeamish.

Fishermen are convinced that seals do immense damage to fish stocks. Their pro- blem, which the anti-cull lobby exploits, is that no scientific research conclusively pro- ves that commercial fish species (salmon, cod, whiting, haddock) are those principal- ly affected. It is mooted, rather dis- ingenuously, that seals might only feed on non-commercial species such as catfish, eels and squid. No scientific assessment of a seal's daily requirement of fish protein has been made. In zoos they consume 22 pounds of fish a day, and wild seals are thought to eat about 15 pounds.

What makes assessment harder is that seals are selective feeders: with salmon, a favourite food, the soft parts may be con- sumed and the remainder wasted. The Ministry of Agriculture has commissioned further research on the seals' diet, distribu- tion, and the danger they pose to local fisheries. Its report, already three years in preparation and due in the new year, has been used as an excuse by the Secretary of State for Scotland, George Younger, for procrastinating.on a decisive cull to control the rising population.

This year a recommended cull of 2,000 pups was commuted by Mr Younger to 1,250. This was presumably a sop to public opinion, as it came alongside the NERC's affirmation that the population would con- tinue to increase. The value of a pup cull as a population control measure is anyway dubious, and superfluous in that 60 per cent of pups die before adulthood. Its real pur- pose is to perpetuate a local tradition, and marginally to offset the extreme financial hardships which failure to agree a common fisheries policy in Brussels has brought to Orcadian fishermen.

A population control cull, on the other hand, would kill pregnant mothers and dependent pups. This was proposed in 1978 by the Sea Mammal Research Unit, which favoured killing 25,000 seals over 6 years. This plan, designed to conserve and main- tain seal and fish stocks, was narrowly re- jected, which in the eyes of many conserva- tionists marked the demise of the influence of responsible opinion.