IFAW Missionary Fired for Talking Détente

By Simon Ward

A veteran seal hugger has been sacked by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) after attempting to broker a deal between Canada's sealers and her unyielding employer. But the offer of compromise from the sealers remains on the table, and for the first time in nearly three decades, there is a glimmer of hope that IFAW might bend.

For 13 years, Annemieke Roell was a devoted crusader for IFAW in its bid to destroy the livelihood of Newfoundland's sealers. As with all IFAW campaigners, she kept herself at arm's length from the opposition, preferring the like-minded company of colleagues at IFAW's Cape Cod office.

And then IFAW, never questioning her loyalty, committed a strategic error: they sent her among the enemy.

Roell spent three years living cheek by jowl with the sealers of the remote Magdalen Islands on a mission to convert them to seal safari guides. But it was the sealers who converted her - and IFAW who promptly gave her the boot.

Seal Salami

According to Canada's Financial Post (Apr. 27, 1996), not only did Roell befriend the sealers, she also did the unthinkable: eat seal meat, and lots of it.

"There's a guy on the Magdalen Islands who owns a restaurant who is every year inventing new recipes," she said. "I had it in paté, I had it in stew. I had salami and pepperoni. I had some of their garlic sausages. They were absolutely delicious."

Seeing both the sealers and their cuisine in a new light, last October Roell approached Garry Troake, representative of the Northeast Coast Sealers Cooperative, who has been on a one-man mission since 1982 to repair the damage done to the sealers' image.

Roell and Troake both knew that the war between IFAW and the sealers was at stalemate. IFAW continued to fundraise on the issue, but could claim no significant victories since the 1983 European ban on imports of seal pup furs. Indeed, shortly after their first meeting, the Canadian government would grant the sealers their biggest quota in 20 years - testimony to IFAW's ultimate ineffectiveness.

The sealers, meanwhile, were slowly but surely developing new markets, and had the full backing of their government, including subsidies.

Roell and Troake decided that it was in the interests of all concerned to talk peace, and the following month Roell arranged for Troake to meet a delegation of her superiors led by A.J. Cady, then IFAW's seal campaign manager.

Radical Offer

The radical proposal which Troake made to Cady was to change their relationship from adversaries to partners.

Central to the plan was the setting up of an independent body with two fundamental roles. The first would be to ensure the sustainability of the seal hunt, and for this purpose scientists would be assigned to the body both by IFAW and the Canadian government. The second would be to oversee the marketing of the hunt's products in ways acceptable to all parties. Meat could be sold to the World Food Bank, for example, while the sealers would willingly close down the export trade in seal penises - which Troake views as "trivial" - as a concession to IFAW.

While acceptance of the offer would require IFAW to break its pledge to end the hunt, Troake hoped the incentive would prove irresistible. Essentially, IFAW was being offered a level of control over a wildlife harvest unheard of for an animal rights NGO - something akin to the whalers asking Greenpeace to help set quotas.

"The initial response seemed good," Troake told the Harpoon, but Cady turned cagey when Troake asked for a joint press conference to announce the détente. Cady insisted Troake secure the penis ban before he would talk further.

"At that point, I began to feel they were just playing me as a fool," recalls Troake, "trying to get as much from me as they could just so they could tell me at the 11th hour that they couldn't help."

Ray of Hope

Troake left the meeting without a commitment from IFAW, but convinced his offer was tempting. The next he heard of the matter was that Roell had been fired.

Troake remains optimistic, however, that his efforts and Roell's sacrifice were not in vain.

"I think there is a rift developing in the IFAW ranks," he says. "Some IFAW people really don't care about animals. They just want the hunt to continue because it gives them a paycheck. But there are others, like Annemieke Roell, who are genuinely concerned about seals, and who saw my offer as a means of reducing the overall quota. If we harvested 100,000 seals with IFAW's consent, instead of 250,000 without it, that would be 150,000 seals saved in their eyes."

"Now I am saying, 'Look guys, you should have taken the offer because no one cares about sealing anymore'," he continues. "'The government of Canada doesn't care, the people of Canada don't care. You're ineffective, you're wasting a lot of money, and one of these days it's going to come out how much you're wasting'."

He has also forwarded his proposal to IFAW founder Brian Davies, urging him to seize the moment.

Davies, who once called "the wrecking of the sealing industry ... the most important animal welfare success of modern times," now resides in semi-retirement on an island retreat off Florida on a salary of more than £115,000 a year. The time has come, Troake believes, for Davies to dust off the visionary skills that first launched him on the road to riches nearly three decades before.

"I've seen his hair turn white and all mine fall out," says Troake. "So I've told him he's missing a tremendous opportunity. If he would join us in managing the seal hunt, he'd really be doing something for conservation, and he'd also have the kind of control other NGOs only dream of. IFAW could be the envy of all the green groups, or they can blow the chance."

Waste of Time and Money

Should IFAW continue in its opposition to the hunt, Troake believes it is only a matter of time before it is exposed for frittering away vast sums of money, without results, on a campaign that should never be.

According to IFAW's own admission to the Post, it spent about US$8 million on its seal campaign between 1990 and July 1995.

"Millions and millions of dollars are being spent on fighting quote unquote this issue," Roell told the Post. "... there are a lot more pressing issues in the world to worry about - animal welfare issues - than a fairly small hunt of an animal that isn't endangered. As long as it [the seal hunt] is done in a humane way, it almost seems like a waste of time and money really."

And the woman who IFAW fired for supping with the devil is not going to make Davies's life easier.

"I'd like to do something from the other side," she says. "I felt bad for the Newfoundlanders, as well as the native people, who really royally got screwed by this ... I feel bad that they're being pounded on time after time. I never saw anything coming out from their point of view."

Brian Davies's response to Troake's letter is now eagerly awaited. Will he seize the opportunity to actually save some seals for a change, and even win some human friends to boot?

As each day goes by and no letter arrives from "His Holiness", Troake's optimism grows a little less.

Back to Seals / Marine Mammals / Home