For a long time, Saimaa ringed seals (norppa, in Finnish) were considered as enemies by the many people who fished in Lake Saimaa. Until 1948, a bounty was paid for every seal that was killed, and it's only in 1955 that they became protected by the law.
Old habits are hard to shake. In general, people support nature protection, but things become complicated when it impacts the way they want or are used to live their life. Environmental education is key, and that's what associations like Suomen Luonnonsuojeluliitto (The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, SLL) are working on. They visit schools, fairs, organise museum exhibitions... the idea is to bring people onboard, to turn opponents into advocates and further the cause of the seal.

​My photo story on Saimaa ringed seal conservation is, well, exactly that: it's not only about the seals, but about the conservation program as a whole, and all the matters related to it. Here are a few events I attended in the past year.

The Saimaa ringed seal (Pusa hispida saimensis), an endangered pinniped endemic to eastern Finland, changes its fur every year. For that, it needs to spend a lot of time outside the water, to dry and shed its fur. This happens after babies are weaned. Thus, May is the best period to find a seal basking on a rock.
This is of course of great interest for the scientists and conservationists who study the seals. They scour the lake, in its multitude of channels and islands, and take careful note of all the seals they spot. Importantly, they take pictures of the seals and add them to their database. That's because each seal sports a unique fur pattern, made of pale rings on a dark canvas, and it can be identified thanks to it.

​The Saimaa ringed seal, norppa in Finnish, is a subspecies of Ringed seal endemic to Lake Saimaa, in eastern Finland. Once widespread, then on the brink of extinction, it has become a tiny bit more common thanks to years of hard work: conservation started at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, and the population has grown especially in the last ten years thanks to wider restrictions on gillnet fishing. Now, a conservation program called Our Saimaa seal LIFE, funded by the European Union and coordinated by Metsähallitus, the Finnish government agency for conservation and forestry, is developing new methods for conservation in a warming climate.