April 27th, 2009

Wild Life Protection: An ongoing Issue

Nigel Barker, renowned  photographer joined The Humane Society of the United States, HSUS, Protect Seals team and more than 100 advocates from the D.C. area at the Canadian Embassy for a rally against Canada’s annual slaughter of seal pups for the fur trade. He used his photographic skills to capture the beauty of Canada’s harp seal nursery and, weeks later, the horror of the baby seals’ death, juxtaposing these images in a photo exhibit and a moving documentary called “A Sealed Fate?”.

With international outrage against the seal hunt growing, seal pelt prices dropping, and nearly 5,000 restaurants and retailers joining the boycott of Canadian seafood,  now is the time for the Canadian government to stop the commercial seal hunt for good.  In November 2008 in  The Story of a Model Advocate, Nigel Barker comments:

In March of this year I flew up to the ice floes of Eastern Canada with The HSUS to witness, in my opinion, one of the wonders of the world. The largest mammalian birthing ground on Earth. Millions of harp seals gather annually in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to give birth to their “white coat” pups. It’s an incredible sight and one that you’ll never forget. Tragically and barbarically, hundreds of thousands of these seals aged 12 days-plus are slaughtered in the most brutal of manners using spiked clubs called hakapiks. So not only was my team and I there to document and photograph the spectacular baby white coat nursery on the frozen ice-scapes off Newfoundland, but we returned to the ice two weeks later to film the ensuing horror of these helpless creatures being bludgeoned to death for their fur. The methods employed by the hunters to kill the seals would cause such unrest if used on land that it makes even the strongest of us shudder. I witnessed personally many young seals being skinned alive as they were merely unconscious, not dead, at the time of skinning. The checks the Canadian government has in place were rarely to never demonstrated and that was when the fishermen knew they were being filmed…

The Humane Society of the United States’s campaign to end the cruel baby seal slaughter in Canada gained fresh support this week from the generosity of our supporters and a special foundation grant.

Baby harp seals are hunted for their fur once they begin to lose their white coat. ©The HSUS

The Giant Steps Foundation, whose mission is to create a kinder, gentler, and healthier world for all living creatures, offered to match donations to The HSUS’ ProtectSeals Campaign up to $500,000 until April 23.

Reuters, Friday April 24 2009 reported that European ambassadors approved a European Union plan to ban imports of furs and other products from culled seals on Friday, moving the 27-nation bloc one step closer to a trade clash with Norway and Canada.

Both seal-hunting nations have warned the EU in recent weeks that they could challenge the EU ban at the World Trade Organisation, the global trade watchdog, if it takes shape as currently foreseen.
“Nothing should now stand in the way of this ban being adopted,” said an official from the EU’s Czech presidency, which brokered a deal this week that will exclude hunts by Inuits.
“It needs to go before the European Parliament in May, but that should be a formality because parliament negotiators have already agreed to it informally,” the official added.
Canada, Greenland and Namibia account for around 60 percent of the 900,000 seals hunted each year. The rest are killed in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Britain and the United States.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere wrote to EU trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton this month arguing that the ban broke the principle of free trade and set a dangerous precedent on the harvesting of renewable resources.

The HSUS will continue to work to save seals until the slaughter is ended for good, and we thank our amazing supporters for helping us get closer to that victory.

For more ways to help end the seal hunt, click here.

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