572 



She has little patience with i)ersons who say that the economy of the Magdalen 

 islanders is dependent on the annual hunt. "How can it be something they 

 count on, when the ice only eoanes close enough once in a decade so that the 

 landsmen can hunt and only 30 of the men on the ships are Magdalen Islanders? 

 And iu those three or four days the most a landsman can make is $500. This 

 keeps them off welfare? Baloney, they're all on welfare. They sit there all 

 winter and wait for the lobstening and fishing in the summer," she said. 



She spoke to many of the seal hunters. Most had sandy hair, lots of freckles, 

 blue eyes and a determination not to repeat the experience. 



"They were courteous and patient, but each one said that this was his first 

 time on the hiuit — and his last." Thirteen of the landsmen had thedr licenses 

 revoked for skinning baby seals that were still alive — something Mrs. Perkins 

 attributes to their lack of experience. 



Most of the money in the hari) seal industry is Norwegian, The Canadian 

 fleet is owned by Karl Carlson of Halifax, N.S.. who is related to the owner 

 of the hide^processiing business in Norway, Mrs. Perkins said. 



The skins obtained in the gulf are only a small part of the total harvest, 

 most of which is obtained off the eoasit of Lahrador. The gulf skins are processed 

 in Newfoundland and then a portion is sent to Norway; the hides obtained on 

 the "front" go directly to Norway. The fur is used primarily for collars and 

 trimjming< 



Farley Mowatt, author of "People of the Deer," was one of those Mrs. Perkins 

 met and talked with. Mowatt, who spent years an a remote area of Canada's 

 arctic wilderness li^^ng with the inland Eskimos, told Mrs. Perkins what he had 

 seen aboard one of the sealing vessels on the "front." 



"There they shoot the seals. He told me that for every five seals that is sihot, 

 only one is taken. The other four slip off the ice into the water to die. Mr. Mowatt 

 said that when you read that 150,000 seals were taken on the front, it means 

 that half a million were killed," Mrs. Perkins said. 



While mas.t of the market for tlie fur is in Europe, Mrs. Perkins was told, 

 a great deal of the leather finds its way to New York. "There is not a single 

 product obtained from the ocean's mammals that does not have a satisfactory 

 substitute," Mrs. Perkins said. 



On Tuesday Senator Fred R. Harr'is (Dem.), Oklahoma, and Representative 

 David Pryor ( Dem. ) , Arkansas, introduced legislation that would not only ban 

 the killing of ocean mammlals in United States waters, but prohibit skins from 

 those animals from being imported into the United States in raw or finished 

 form- 



The bill would also prohibit the killing of fur seals in the Pribilof Islands 

 by the U.S. Government and would designate the islands as a national seal 

 and bird sanctuary under the control of the Department of the Interior. 



Her many trips to Africa have given Mrs. Perkins an acute awareness of di- 

 minishing species. 



Mrs. Perkins said that her work for the Elsa Wildlife Fund and other con- 

 servation causes is "sometimes hopeless, thankless, frustrating and a heart- 

 breaking way to spend one's life — coping with people who cannot see beyond 

 their o\Ani personal fun, sport, profit or political gain to the empty world that 

 lies ahead when wildlife no longer exists." 



Weary and discouraged, Mrs. Perkins asked a Canadian official if letters and 

 petitions had any effect at all on the government. 



"Definitely," answered the scientists, who did not want his name revealed. 

 "You must keep the pressure on. Don't ever stop. It is only the continued pressure 

 of concerned people all over the world that has made the government put re- 

 strictions on the hunt so that it is as humane as it is," he said. 



Mrs. Perkins recommends that persons who want to express their opinion on 

 the seal kill write to the Canadian Ambassador, A. Edgar Ritchie, 1747 Mas- 

 sachusetts Avenue, Washington, and the Norwegian Ambassador, Arne Gunneng, 

 3401 Massachusetts Avenue. 



The Canadian have hunted seals since the nineteenth century. The Norwegians 

 began to participate in the hunt in 1938. No Norwegian ships have been allowed 

 to hunt in the gulf since 1965, but the Norwegians still take the majority of the 

 skins, from the coast of Labrador. 



"The Canadian government has no jurisdiction over the Norwegian ships, no 

 inspectors aboard and no way of enforcing either the quota or how the seals 

 are killed." Mrs. Perkins said. The Norwegian hunt off the "front" will remain 

 veiled in secrecy until some i^erson or group charters a boat to patrol the waters 

 off Labrador. 



