Saturday, June 17, 2006

For Queen and Country


Our black bears die in the service of the Queen and her stupid Royal Guards. Because faux fur hats just lack that glossy look. And who knows how many poached furs are sold to the English Crown while livers and gallbladders are shipped to China. Time to stop ALL BEAR HUNTS.

Hundreds of black bears face slaughter after Army abandons trial of synthetic fur for Guards' ceremonial headgear

As a show of British military finery, the Trooping of the Colour has had no equal for 258 years. Today, the Guards regiments will parade for the monarch and tourists in their spotless regalia, topped with their lustrous bearskins.

But as the Queen takes the salute to mark her 80th birthday celebrations this morning, some 4,000 miles away a group of hunters will be preparing to go into the dense woodlands of Canada and kill an Ursus americanus or Canadian black bear.

Yesterday, the MoD - and by default the guardsmen who will stand to attention on Horse Guards Parade today - were accused by animal welfare campaigners of perpetuating the annual slaughter of 10,000 Canadian black bears, many of whom die in pain from botched kills by fee-paying trophy " sportsmen".

The Army confirmed yesterday it would continue to buy between 50 and 100 bearskins a year after it declared a trial to replace the distinctive headwear with hats fashioned from synthetic fur had failed because they got " waterlogged" on rainy days.

Senior officers complained that the man-made hats lacked the "life" and "bounce" of real bearskin - the focus of millions of tourist photographs every year and, as one MoD official put it, "as much an icon of Britishness as a red telephone box.
Ohh our poor bears suffer so that an icon of Britishness can continue. Gimme a break.


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