biodiverseed:

I support the right of humans, as primates embroiled in a complex life web, to use the animal-derived resources they need to survive, as long as they take care to minimise animal suffering in the process. The tools use in the seal hunt are meant to kill instantly, and for the most part, do.

Animals that humans hunt – especially those killed by a skilled hunter
– have a much faster death than those that fall victim to nonhuman
predators. Humans generally take much more care to give an instant death than, say, a polar bear does. Death itself isn’t
suffering: it’s the end of suffering, and it’s also a natural part of life. 

And though these animals may have a will to live, 30% of Harp seals die of exposure in their first year:
that’s natural selection, and while it’s not pretty, it’s also a force
that drives evolution, and the continued survival of these species. The
DFO quotas are well below 30% of the population: Harp seal populations
are estimated to be around 5.5 Million, and around 70,000 are killed
annually in the Canadian hunt.

For people living up North, or in coastal communities with limited opportunities, there is no realistic possibility of sustaining their lives with plant-based resources. It isn’t about something as abstract as economics: it’s about survival.

You are also misinformed about the age of the animals hunted: hunting of
“baby” harp seals and hooded seals (whitecoats and bluebacks,
respectively) has been illegal in Canada since the 1987. This is information that is freely available from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada.

Predators are a part of the ecology that sustains life on this planet, and humans have a long and storied history fulfilling that role in ecosystems. As far as my morals are concerned, I see no contradiction in my stated ethics and my support of the hunt: suffering and death are inevitabilities of existence, and humans go so far as to have veterinarians extensively study how quickly an animal dies when it is killed for meat or other resources, in order to minimise suffering as much as possible. (See: the work of Temple Grandin)

We don’t live in a futuristic utopia where people – especially people in remote, non-agricultural areas – don’t need to kill other animals to survive, and my support of hunting and fishing rights is directly related to my support of indigenous resistance and sovereignty.

Humans doing what they need to do to survive and thrive isn’t “evil:” it’s only “evil” if natural processes like death and predation are viewed as intrinsically immoral, and humans are viewed as something other than biological organisms, neither is true. The idea of ‘cruelty-free’ or ‘moral’ food and fibre from that perspective is also a fallacy: plants have senses, and 20 field mice are killed for every loaf of bread. Agriculture and monoculture cropping have relentlessly destroyed soil life webs and fragmented habitat. Speaking purely from a utilitarian perspective, ending the life of a cow kills one organism, whereas a tilled field of soybeans kills hundreds of thousands, including hundreds of “intelligent” creatures like rodents.

As always, I’ll suggest this article for a moral perspective on hunting:

‘The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and Human-Animal Sociality’