The International Fund for Animal Welfare urges the new federal conservative government of Canada to act with caution and scrap this year's commercial harp seal hunt practiced in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on the coast of Newfoundland if there is no ice for seals to give birth.

Harp seals in point of fact rely on stable ice platform to give birth to their pups and successfully care for them. So when there is thin ice, the normal pupping and nursing are put at risk and large numbers of pups could die. This fact was made known by Dr. David Lavigne, an international marine expert from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who has studied harp seals and their behaviors for the past 30 years. He added, "The combination of a lack of ice and a seal hunt could result in the loss of almost all of this year's pups born in the Gulf and, possibly, on the Front, as well."

In February and March, there is a prediction of continued above-normal temperatures and little or no ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where hundreds of thousands of seal pups are born yearly by mid-March. The government scientists of Canada has put into record incidents of three-quarters of pups that died as a consequence of bad ice conditions. The same incident took place in 1998 and 2000, where an estimated one-quarter of the pups died due to lack of ice.

The appeal now is: No ice, no hunt.

The commercial seal hunt in Canada is the largest marine mass slaughter in the world, and Canada as of today has slaughtered over 320,000 seals in March and April, with baby seals included. If no valuable and operational solution against this scrutiny will be made, then the lives of these seals are definitely in jeopardy.

Maybe a lot still don't realize that the risk to the seal population is disturbingly high. Unless the government imposes some strict measures and be firm on its penalty of action against seal hunters who constantly kill above their quotas, then we can save more lives. Quotas are not set without purpose. They are supposed to be followed faithfully; otherwise, what's the point?

A report from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans says that the population will deplete by more than 70 percent within the next 15 years. This could be prevented if the government will do something about this. Not tomorrow, but today.