HSUS Ends it’s Documentation for this Year of the Horror of the Canadian Baby Seal Slaughter

Looks like this may be coming to an end for this year. It’s not over yet, but with the HSUS pulling out, hopefully soon this travesty will end. Note too that they also will be pursuing legal action against the wacko hunt supporters in Cartwright and in the eastern Quebec community of Blanc-Sablon, where about 80 residents surrounded a small hotel Thursday where activists were staying. They also will file against their good friends in the Canadian Government.

Article:

Second anti-sealing group pulls out of East Coast seal hunt off N.L.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1845&ncid=1845&e=9&u=
/cpress/20060416/ca_pr_on_na/seal_hunt

Sun Apr 16, 5:10 PM ET

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. (CP) - Another anti-sealing group that has been observing the controversial East Coast hunt has pulled out of Atlantic Canada.

Activists with the Humane Society of the United States left the region on Sunday after weeks of documenting the kill in between sometimes-violent confrontations with local residents and hunt supporters.

Spokeswoman Rebecca Aldworth said a day earlier that her group would stay until the hunt had finished.

About 200 small sealing boats remain on the ice. But Aldworth said now that larger vessels have filled their quotas and ended their hunt, the group had seen everything they needed.

"Our ability to document happens during the larger vessel quota and that has been closed," Aldworth said from St. John's. "It's now a very slow part of the hunt."

The hunt on a vast area known as the Front began last Wednesday with a quota of 230,000 seals. Larger vessels reached their quota and were called off on Friday.

Protesters with the International Fund for Animal Welfare left the hunt on Friday, complaining that angry residents on the Labrador community of Cartwright threatened to stop them from refuelling their helicopter.

Aldworth's group had a similar experience in Cartwright on Wednesday, but she said that didn't affect the timing of the observers' departure.

She plans on pursuing legal action against hunt supporters in Cartwright and in the eastern Quebec community of Blanc-Sablon, where about 80 residents surrounded a small hotel Thursday where activists were staying.

Aldworth claimed residents rammed a van carrying activists, and complained that police were too slow to offer an escort away from the hotel.

The humane society also plans on taking the federal Fisheries Department to court for denying Aldworth and other activists observer permits during the hunt on the Front.

Aldworth and several others were arrested during the Gulf of St. Lawrence hunt last month for violating their observer permits, which require them to stay 10 metres from sealers.

None of the activists have been charged, but federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn said anyone under investigation would be denied observer permits.

"The ability to document this hunt is a constitutional right," said Aldworth.

A spokesman with the federal Fisheries Department was unavailable on Sunday.

Aldworth said her group will now review video footage from the hunt and report any violations of hunting regulations to the federal Fisheries Department.