Despite a public outcry across the globe, every year hunters in Canada massacre hundreds of thousands of seals in order to sell their skins and rake in profits, and this year the total allowable catch has been set at 275,000 baby harp seals. Your voice is urgently needed to help urge the Canadian government to ban the killing of seals once and for all!
Sealers bludgeon seals with clubs and "hakapiks" (clubs with a metal hook on the end), drag conscious seals across the ice floes with boat hooks, and toss dead and dying animals into heaps, leaving their carcasses to rot because there is no market for their meat. Seals are also shot, but bludgeoning is preferred, because pelt buyers deduct money for every bullet hole in a seal's skin. Click here to watch the video.
Rebecca Aldworth, a native Newfoundlander who for years has worked to stop the seal slaughter, described this scene during a previous year's hunt:
"A movement catches my eye, and I realize with horror that a clubbed baby seal is still conscious. She is writhing around on the ice in pain, moving her flippers. She lies next to another seal who has been killed, vacant eyes staring up, blood already frozen in the ice under her mouth. It is a macabre scene—the dead and the dying huddled together here in the rain."
We need your help! Please send an e-mail to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper urging him to support a nationwide ban on seal hunting.
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