Slaughter of unique seals living in Lake Baikal

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES!

A shocked local man came across the dead seals, some of them shot, a find which coincides with an angry debate on whether it is right to cull the earless mammals which are endemic to the world's oldest and deepest lake. The disturbing scenes have led to a petition to President Vladimir Putin and other government officials calling for the seals to be protected. 'They were killed, brought here and dumped. How could they kill such an animal?' asked Matvey, who sent a video of the slaughtered seals to news outlet  Vesti.Irkutsk.

'Evidently, someone decided to regulate the number of seals in this way.' He demanded: 'The offender must be punished for this. This is - murder. Real murder.'

There are currently strict laws banning the hunting of Baikal seals, but fishermen claiming the rising population is detrimental to fish stocks in a lake larger in size than Belgium. A scientist and senator in the Russian parliament has called for some 7,000 seals to be hunted each year in a cull to control the population, in part to boost the local fishing industry.

Police went to the scene and found evidence of the unofficial cull, which took place a week previously. They opened an investigation. Animals rights investigators say the butchery in these pictures is not unique and that up to 15,000 seals are illegally killed annually. 

'The Baikal seal is the only mammal that lives in the waters of Lake Baikal. This cute animal inhabits almost the entire area of the lake and eats fish,' states the petition. 'The main seal rookery located on Ushkaniye Islands - there is plentiful food, comfortable stones to relax on, and most important - there are almost no people. The seals' natural enemies are poachers.'

Alexander Savin, an activist behind  the petition, said: 'All of us know that the seal is a symbol of the Lake Baikal, that it is a sacred animal, as is the lake itself. But someone does not think so and kills seals, justifying it by the fact that the mammals reduce the population of fish in Baikal. But you must admit that it is a normal, natural selection, and mostly the fish population decreases due to poaching and water pollution.

This case is not unique, it repeats over the years. That is why we wrote a petition to Vladimir Putin, (prime minister) Dmitry Medvedev and the Director of Greenpeace Kumi Naidoo. Friends, do not be indifferent - the future of Baikal seal, the symbol of the cleanest lakes in the world, is only in our hands.'

Arnold Tulohonov, a senator for the Republic of Buryatia in the upper house of the Russian parliament and director  of the Baikal Institute of Natural Resources, said recently that seals must be hunted to prevent an epidemic, and to provide work for local people. There should be a return to legal hunting, he claimed. 'We've always been shooting 7,000, and everything was okay.'

He added: 'The population of seals has grown. Normally, we have about 100,000 of them but now, I think, it's more. And they have a habit of dying if they can't find food.' Previously the overpopulation of seals led to an outbreak of distemper, he said. 'It can repeat.'