97 



To emphasize the reality of this proposal, I should like to read 

 a comment I received a week ago from no less an authority than 

 Lars-Eric Lindblad, organizer of extraordinary tours to places like 

 the Arctic, the Amazon, Darwin's Galapagos, and many others: 



Wildlife everywhere in the world is increasingly becoming a big money 

 earner — not as furs or as meat, but as a target for photographers and nature- 

 lovers of which there are millions. The Aleut natives would benefit to a much 

 greater extent from the tourists who could be induced to come to the Islands 

 than they would from being butchers of these beautiful fur seals. 



How many women will buy coats and other garments made of the skins of 

 wild animals in years to come? It is definitely becoming unfashionable to 

 wear furs. It is time for the Department of the Interior to switch the economy 

 of the Pribilofs from killing the seals to making a fabulous tourist attraction. 

 It is not difficult to do and within a few years 'the Government could stop or 

 reduce their subsidies to the Aleuts. 



Mr. Linblad's point that now is the time to examine other employ- 

 ment for the Aleuts, tourism or otherwise, is one which should be 

 transmitted to the appropriate agencies. Certainly, these people orig- 

 inally sent as slaves to the Pribilofs by the Russians should no longer 

 be forced to do their demeaning work. 



Another justification for the slaughter, subscribed to by many 

 simple fishermen and the U.S. Department of State, is the fact that 

 seals eat fish, fish which are wanted, mind you, for the profit of fish- 

 ermen, even though they may be discarded as was the case, by the ton, 

 last summer in Alaska. 



We will certainly concede that seals eat fish, but again we point 

 to the lack of knowledge of the interrelationship of living creatures 

 and cite again the fact that the salmon follow the seals to their breed- 

 ing grounds, which must surely indicate that with the disappearance 

 of the ocean mammals, there may well be no more fish. Even the De- 

 partment of the Interior is willing to admit a certain humility in 

 this field, and I quote from an official report : 



Considering the volume and frequency of occurrence of commercially im- 

 portant fishes found in fur seal stomachs, and our limited knowledge of the 

 ocean environment and its ecology, we believe the effects of predation on food 

 species with economic value are impossible to assess with any degree of con- 

 fidence. [Exhibit Y.] 



News of this limited knowledge of the interrelationships of seals 

 and fish should be the subject of a massive educational campaign with 

 fishermen, particularly those in Alaska, where the hair seal, which has 

 a limited economic value, is the object of a sustained effort to eliminate 

 it through such methods as dynamiting and shooting. 



Harbor seals around the coasts of our mainland are accorded similar 

 treatment, and at least one State — Oregon — employs a man to shoot 

 all seals on sight. This brutality and lack of respect for nature and 

 her creatures must be brought to an end, and only the Harris-Pryor 

 bill will do it. 



An animal very much endangered due to its persecution by fur 

 hunters and fishermen is the charming sea otter. It is so rare now off 

 the coast of California that the abalone fishermen who formerly killed 

 it on sight have occasion to regret tlieir black deeds. 



With the disappearance of the otter, a voracious eater of sea urcliins, 

 the latter population has exploded so as to consume the giant kelp, 

 mainstay of abalone and other fish. Now, human deep sea divers are 

 employed in an unsuccessful effort to replace the sea otters in killing 

 the urchins. 



