Thousands of Baby Seals Are Being Killed in Canada

There is an inhumane and atrocious seal hunt going on in Canada each year, where thousands of baby seals are clubbed to death. After the baby seals are clubbed to death, they are skinned. Those who club the seals prefer baby seals because of their white fur. They have no regard for the lives of the defenseless seals and just leave them to rot after stealing their hide. The seals have it in their nature not to fear humans so they do not usually run from the people who come to harm them. The Canadian seal hunt is damaging the global and North American seal population.

Now some of the facts. Ninety-five percent of the harp seals that are killed during the annual Canadian seal hunt are less than three months old. Many of them are left to die on top of or under the ice, and some of the baby seals are even skinned alive. Most Canadians oppose the seal hunt, however, the government has authorized it so that over one million harp seals have been killed in the last three years. Every year the quota for the seal hunt has been getting larger – this year, it’s over 300,000 baby seals.

There is no economic reason to continue this mass murder of the baby seals. Those responsible for clubbing seals gain on average less than five percent of their annual earnings from the seal beatings and don’t need that money to survive.

While no headway has taken place in Canada, the government has been expanding the quota even though the majority of the citizens are against the hunt. In many other countries much progress has been made. Currently Canada and Norway seem to be among the world’s only baby seal-supplying countries.

The United States was one of the first countries to begin banning seal skins from Canada, banning them in 1972. Lots of other countries have followed – Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Luxembourg, Croatia, Panama and Mexico have all either banned seal products or announced they plan to do so. The European Union on September 6, 2006 introduced legislation to the executive body of the European Union to ban all trade in harp and hooded seal products. This is now in affect and Canada is losing markets to sell their clubbed-to-death baby seals.

One of my favorite “save the seals” foundations is IFAW. Its Website
ifaw.org

has a petition you can sign to help stop the Canadian seal hunt and it is actually sent to the Canadian government. This site also has some really powerful videos and documentation of the seal hunt along with lots of important information. It even takes donations to enable you to fund different things for the seals.

Please be aware of the horrible death seals experience next time you consider purchasing a seal skin product. The planet needs more people to be aware of this in order to balance its ecosystem.