Faroe Islands limit dolphin massacre to 500 animals
The Faroe Islands are limiting the annual dolphin hunt to 500 animals. Animal welfare organizations criticize the regulation as inadequate.
Following an outcry of outrage over nearly 1,500 dolphins killed in September of last year, the Faroe Islands are now releasing only a set number of animals for hunting.
An annual quota of 500 dolphins shall apply for 2022 and 2023, the autonomous government of the islands, which belong to Denmark, announced on Sunday. Previously, almost 1.3 million people had signed a petition to ban the traditional hunting practice known as «theGrindadrap».
In September of last year, hunters drove more than 1,423 dolphins into a fjord within a single day and subsequently killed them. Photos of the bloodied carcasses on the shore triggered horror and outrage across online networks. Supporters of the hunt, however, point out that dolphins and the whales also hunted have contributed to feeding the island population for centuries.
In the course of this single grind — the driving of small cetaceans into a bay to be killed there with knives and lances — more animals of this dolphin species were killed than the total number over the past 10 years. The population of the Atlantic white-sided dolphin has also declined in recent years due to changes in its Atlantic habitat caused by climate change. Such events can indeed have negative consequences for the survival of the species.
