Article content continued

“That was very successful for a period of time, but you have to continue to do this or they just come back,” he said. “If you are going to control the population through culls, it needs to be an ongoing program and it has to be controlled so it doesn’t affect the viability of the seal population.”

Photo by Elaine Thompson / Associated Press files

The plight of B.C.’s endangered orcas adds some urgency to the debate. There are only 75 members of the southern resident group left, down from 83 two years ago, compared with 40,000 seals in the Strait of Georgia alone.

“If you are going to help the orcas, you have to look at all the causes (of decline), and one of those is going to be seals; another will be fishing,” said Riddell. “To work, a cull needs to be well-organized and it won’t be popular.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is currently taking public input on a recovery strategy for the northern and southern resident killer whales.

While seals are not named specifically, Ottawa’s Species At Risk Action Plan calls for an assessment of the “prey competition” between orcas and other salmonid predators and potential “management actions in support of prey availability.”

“We have talked to the DFO about (a seal cull) and they said they would give us a licence to harvest seals if we could come up with a use for them,” said Malloway. “Fish farmers are allowed to shoot them and they just go to waste, but (First Nations) aren’t allowed to shoot them to protect our nets.”

rshore@postmedia.com

twitter.com/theGreenManblog

You might also like:

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

CLICK HERE to report a typo.

Is there more to this story? We’d like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com.