<div>Vaalea, </div> <div> </div> <div>Another item from The Toronto Star. Hopefully, he will exert a huge influence and generate masses of publicity (Stephen Harper sang Beatle songs on his campaign plane...maybe he'll be so starstruck that he'll make changes) :)<BR><BR><B><I></div> <DIV class=headline>Ex-Beatle, wife to visit seal pups</DIV> <DIV class=pubdate>Mar. 1, 2006. 01:00 AM</DIV> <div><BR> </div> <DIV class=articlebody><!-- icx_story_begin -->Paul and Heather McCartney will visit the Maritimes later this week to observe harp seal pups before Canada's annual seal hunt, says the Humane Society of the United States. <div></div>The former Beatle and his wife, long-time animal rights activists, will take the trip tomorrow and Friday to "highlight the work of two animal protection groups to stop the Canadian seal hunt," the society said in a release. <div></div>"Heather and Paul's visit to the seal pups will shine a global media
spotlight on this cruel and needless slaughter," said Rebecca Aldworth, the society's director of Canadian wildlife issues. <div></div>The timing of this year's hunt is uncertain. Generally the hunt runs from mid-March through mid-April. This year, however, warm weather has left much of the Gulf of St. Lawrence — normally covered by ice several centimetres thick — spotted with patches of thin ice. <div></div>Twenty years ago, the centuries-old industry seemed doomed. <div></div>Celebrities like Brigitte Bardot and Martin Sheen pushed to have the hunt stopped amid a worldwide campaign that featured graphic photos of doe-eyed whitecoats, or baby harp seals, being bludgeoned on the ice floes. <div></div>The protests worked. The United States moved to ban the import of seal products in 1972, and the European Union instituted a partial ban in 1983. <div></div>Prices plummeted to as low as $5 per seal pelt, and in 1987 the Canadian government banned the killing of whitecoats.
<div></div>The protestors went away, but the industry did not die — by the mid-1990s, new markets opened up and the price for pelts started to rise. <div></div>Canadian Press</DIV></I></B><p>
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