Victory Sealed After 50-Year Campaign - But the Battle to Save Marine Mammals from Salmon Farms Continues!

When John Robins of Save Our Seals Fund and Animal Concern started campaigning fifty years ago against the trigger-happy salmon farming industry he was a young man.

The 50-year battle to stop salmon farmers killing seals has been spearheaded by veteran campaigner John Robins.

When Robins appeared on ITN News in 2015 – a watershed moment in the fight to stop the killing of seals by salmon farms – he was grey-haired like the seals he has fought so hard to protect.

I first connected with John in the 1990s when working with Friends of the Earth Scotland and we've worked on the seal campaign for over a decade.

My Facebook feed recently popped up with these news stories from eight years ago.

Fisheries Information Service reported in 2015:

My blog reported in 2015:

As John Robins of Save Our Seals Fund wrote in July 2012:

"When you buy Scottish farmed salmon, even RSPCA endorsed Scottish farmed salmon, you pay for bullets to shoot seals."

My blog reported in 2016:

The new U.S. rules prohibiting imports of salmon from farms killing marine mammals are making waves around the world. In Scotland, the Government and the Scottish salmon farming industry appear to be suffering from a nasty case of Seal Shock Syndrome.

Mark Ruskell MSP, the environment spokesperson for the Scottish Greens, told The Glasgow Evening News (18 September): "An import ban looms and yet ministers seem blasé about the impact this could have on one of their key food export sectors". The Sunday Herald reported (18 September):

In response to the article above, John Robins of Save Our Seals Fund commented:

Writing in The Sunday Herald (25 September), John Robins commented:

Scotland's 'blasé' attitude to an import ban on Scottish salmon was the subject of emails sent last week by John Robins of Save Our Seals Fund to both the U.S. and Scottish Government:

As Animals 24-7 reported in September 2016:

Animals 24-7 reported last week (26 June 2020):

Animals 24-7 continued (26 June 2020):

So when you read the news earlier this month that the Scottish Government will ban the killing of seals by salmon farms by 2021 it is a welcome victory that owes a debt of gratitude to campaigners like John Robins who have fought for five decades.