Tag Archives: harbour seal

Scottish Tax Payers ‘Pay-into’ Norwegian Owned Fish Farm Profits

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Dead seal - shot.

Investigations into the shot seal incident, reported by a family of four holidaying Continue reading →

Plea for Government action as holiday family finds shot seal

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Dead seal - shot.

Like many people visiting the west coast of Scotland, a family of four Continue reading →

Green MSP calls for ban on shooting common seals as Argyll’s seal population drops 25% in 2007

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Robin Harper, MSP for the Lothians, has called for a complete ban on the shooting on common or harbour seals. The Green party, to which he belongs, has highlighted research by the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University. This shows that Scotland’s seal population dropped by 56% between 2000 and 2007.

The Green Party also said that numbers in Argyll’s coastal seal colonies fell by a 25% last year and have been falling by 10% a year in Orkney’s populations.

The current rules allow common seals to be shot by licensed individuals to stop damage to fish farm cages and shootings are not reportable. This means that there is uncertainty on how many are shot each year.

The Greens say that research suggests that this figure is 3-5,000 and that UK-wide common seal numbers have fallen by 56% since the millennium. The Governemnt ‘believes’ that fewer than 1,000 are annually shot.

Mr Harper describes the common seal as: ‘an iconic symbol of Scottish marine life’, saying that: ‘they are also at the top of the food chain and provide us with strong indicators of the health of the marine environment’.

He wants the Scottish Government to ban the shooting of the seals and to increase the strength of measures to protect them in the new Marine Bill. At the moment the Bill contains a proposal for all shootings to be reported. Experts do not see this as adequate in halting the decline in seal populations.

The Seal Protection Action Group’s Campaign Director, Andy Ottoway, says that the Scottish public supports a shooting ban.

The Scottish Government admits that surveys following the introduction of measures in 2002 to regulate seal shooting in the Moray Firth suggest that there has since been a progressive recovery of seal numbers.The Government has set up the Scottish Seals Forum, bringing together all those with an interest in Scotland’s seals. This enables the exchange of information and the development of a co-ordinated approach to the management of Scottish seal populations.

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