[4animals] Urgent: Five ways you can stop the seal hunt

[Edelweiss D'Andrea]

Urgent: Five ways you can stop the seal hunt
            International Fund for Animal Welfare March 14, 2006

            Urgent: Five ways you can stop the seal hunt

                              More than 300,000 seals will be killed this
year alone.



            Dear Edelweiss,

            Right now on the sparkling ice floes of Eastern Canada, hundreds
of thousands of baby seals are about to die.

            In just a few short days, seals as young as 12 days of age will
be clubbed and beaten. Others will be shot with a rifle in open water,
fighting for their lives 
 many left to suffocate under the ice or be pulled
onto boats with sharp metal hooks.

            95% of the seals killed will be less than three months old. Some
will even be skinned alive. But there’s still time to help.

            If you were to witness the seal hunt personally, your heart
would break.

            There is no economic or environmental reason to justify Canada’s
commercial seal hunt. This is a cruel and unnecessary hunt, opposed by the
majority of Canadians. This government supported hunt isn’t designed to
promote science or meaningful employment for Newfoundlanders, it’s designed
to gain votes for politicians.

            Most seal pups lay on the ice alone and helpless, crying in
anguish before they are violently cut down. During the past 30 years, IFAW
hunt observers have continued to witness and document severe cruelty at the
hunt.

            All this to produce less than one percent of the Newfoundland
GDP and, by the government’s own calculations, about $1,000 per sealer per
year. A hunt that is nationally and internationally offensive is of no use
to today’s Newfoundland and a progressive Canada trying to build a
reputation for first-class environmental tourism.

            Canada’s government is counting on your silence

            World-leading marine scientists agree that the current high
quotas for killing seals are putting the harp seal population at serious
risk of being depleted. As many seals are killed today as during the 1950’s
and 60’s when commercial sealers significantly reduced the seal population.

            You helped raise a global outcry that stopped the killing of
whitecoat baby seals in the 1980’s. But baby seals as young as 12 days old
are still being left to suffer a lingering death besides piles of seal
bodies rotting on the bloody ice after their fur is removed.

            Four ways you can help stop Canada’s seal hunt right now:

            1) Write a Letter to Save a Seal
            The Canadian government believes no one cares enough about the
seal hunt for them to end it. Prove them wrong. Send a letter to your
representative calling for an end to Canada’s commercial seal hunt before
millions more baby seals die an unnecessary and cruel death.

            2) Sign the Petition to Prime Minister Harper
            The Premier of Newfoundland & Labrador made some shocking and
false statements about IFAW and the seal hunt on the Larry King Show. The
public deserves honesty and respect for the real facts about the killing of
baby seals. Sign the petition urging Canada’s Prime Minister to tell the
truth about what’s happening on the ice.

            3) Make a Donation to Stop the Seal Hunt
            IFAW brings journalists and politicians to observe the seal
hunt, resulting in growing condemnation of the hunt around the world. Thanks
in large part to IFAW’s efforts, legislation to ban seal products is
advancing in a number of countries, such as the Belgium, Italy and the
Netherlands. Your contribution is needed to help document the cruelty
occurring on the ice this spring and expose the truth.

            4) Tell Others to Help Protect Baby Seals
            It only takes a few seconds to spread the word about the cruelty
of Canada’s seal hunt and our efforts to end it, yet the impact on the
campaign is enormous. Please invite your friends, family, and colleagues to
help save the seals.

            The seal hunt will be underway in just a few weeks. Please take
action now to help spare another single baby seal from a cruel and senseless
death.

            Sincerely,

            Fred O’Regan


            P.S. Looking for even more ways to help? Please consider taking
a fifth action: writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper
speaking out against the seal hunt. Also be sure to forward this message to
as many friends as possible. It’s critical that more people speak out right
now before the slaughter of baby seals begins.


            IFAW © 2006
            This message was sent to: edandrea at magma.ca

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