Advice: limit reception of seals

A scientific committee identifies the current degree of shelter of seals in the Netherlands ‘unacceptable’.

The reception of seals should be limited. That sets an international scientific commission in an advice to the Dutch minister Carola Schouten (Agriculture and Nature, ChristenUnie). Not …

The reception of seals should be limited. That sets an international scientific commission in an advice to the Dutch minister Carola Schouten (Agriculture and Nature, ChristenUnie). Not more than 5 percent of all the young seals that annually in the Netherlands are born, should be taken care of.

The number of seals in the shelters is included, has increased from 20 in 1980 to 500 to 1,000 in the past few years, according to the report of the commission. In the years 2007 to 2013 was more than 20 percent of all born young of the common seal temporarily absorbed, with a peak of 50 percent in 2011. “Because seals are wild animals, such percentages from the point of view of animal welfare is unacceptable,” writes the commission. Moreover, since 2014 some shelters are already “selective” in the record of seals.

In the Netherlands two types of seals the common seal and the grey seal. The populations of both species over the past forty years has increased dramatically. There were, in 2016, about nine thousand of ordinary seals, while in 1980, another five were. In 1980 came the grey seal, it’s almost impossible in the Netherlands, but since then it has made a remarkable recovery occurred: in 2016, there were more than five thousand counted.

The netherlands now has five shelters for seals. That A Seal in the South Holland Stellendam, Ecomare, the seal sanctuary Pieterburen in Groningen, the seal sanctuary Eemsdelta in the Groningen Termunterzijl and the seal sanctuary Terschelling. The centres are regularly disagreed on the approach to the care of seals. The advice of the international commission would meet all the confusion to an end.