This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.

The largest marine mammal slaughter on Earth is already underway, as Canada embarks on its annual commercial seal hunt. But the worst is yet to come, as the majority of seals are killed in the spring in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Newfoundland and Labrador. Please join us in urging the Canadian government to finally put an end to this cruel and unnecessary slaughter once and for all!

Canada's seal hunt is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of harp seals and their babies. 97 percent of the seals killed are pups under three months of age, so the slaughter is doubly cruel — cruel to the individuals killed, and cruel to the grieving parents they leave behind. To make matters worse, the killing is entirely pointless, as the seals are killed primarily for their fur, precisely at the moment when the fashion industry is abandoning the use of fur at a record pace.

The method with which the hunt is carried out is incredibly cruel. As noted, most seals are babies who are still nursing when the killers come. The seals are killed with wooden clubs, horrific-looking picks called hakapiks, and guns. Because the seals are hunted from moving boats, the pups are rarely killed instantaneously. A 2001 study found that 42 percent of slaughtered seals were skinned while still alive.

Hundreds of thousands of seals are killed each year during this hunt. In the past five years, more than one million seals were killed. The last time seals were hunted at such a rate — in the 1950s and 1960s — the harp seal population was reduced to 33 percent of its original size. And all of this is happening just as the climate crisis is warming the oceans and melting the ice that the seals breed upon.

This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.