Urge Congress to Help End the Seal Hunt

Urge Congress to Help End the Seal Hunt

The Canadian seal hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world.

The Canadian government is allowing fishermen to kill 280,000 harp seals in the 2009 hunt, an increase of 5,000 from 2008. Fishermen will beat and shoot to death pups—many of them little more than 12 days old—for their fur. Despite new regulations that the Canadian government claims will make the hunt "humane," sealers have already been witnessed skinning pups while alive and conscious.

The senate's Canadian seal hunt resolution (S. Res. 84), sponsored by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Susan Collins (R-ME), urges the Canadian government to end this cruel and senseless slaughter. Please ask your two U.S. senators to co-sponsor S. Res. 84.

TAKE ACTION
Please make brief, polite phone calls to your two U.S. senators to urge them to co-sponsor S. Res. 84 and join in the effort to end the cruel seal hunt in Canada. Click here to look up your senators and their office phone numbers.

After you make your phone calls, fill in and submit the form on the right to automatically send a follow-up email to your senators urging them to support the resolution. Congress receives a lot of email, so it's important that you edit the subject line and the message with your own words so that your legislators know the message came from a real constituent.

For days, the ProtectSeals team has lived in a horrible limbo. Heavy ice has locked sealing boats in the harbor, keeping them from the seal pups just a few miles off the shores.

But it's only a matter of time: The ice floes are pulling apart, slowly creating paths between the sealers and their prey, and the winds have pushed some pups into the sealers' path. Watching this is devastating, but we know that documenting the cruelty of the slaughter will help shut down Canada's commercial seal hunt forever.

If you are a U.S. citizen, there is something that you can do right now to help: Ask your senators to help end the cruel and senseless seal hunt by co-sponsoring the Levin-Collins Canadian seal hunt resolution.

Canada increasingly stands alone in defending its barbaric hunt -- Russia just ended its own seal slaughter, and nations around the world are banning their trade in seal products. And in a matter of weeks, the European Union will consider a prohibition on its trade in seal products, starving sealers of one of the largest markets for seal fur fashion.

The U.S. government is Canada's most important trading partner, so it can play a key role in convincing Canada to stop the slaughter. If your senators haven't already signed on, please urge them to co-sponsor the Canadian seal hunt resolution today.

While Canada's leaders are cynically trying to convince the world that the slaughter is "humane," we are up here documenting the same kind of cruelty we bear witness to every single year. Just days ago, I saw sealers beat terrified three-week-old pups to death in front of each other, failing to check if a seal was unconscious or dead before cutting her open.

As the world condemns the slaughter, the Canadian government is allowing fishermen to kill a staggering 280,000 seals this year, up 5,000 from last year. And even if sealers exceed that quota, the government isn't likely to punish them. Sealers have killed tens of thousands of seals more than they're allowed to in recent years, and the government has stood idly by.

I say enough is enough. Ask your senators to tell Canada to end the hunt.

Thank you for speaking up for seals from home.

https://community.hsus.org/campaign/FED_2009_sealresolution/bdss3erl78i63bx?source=gabeak