Nude Models Fight Bear Skins With Bare Skin

For Immediate Release:
October 20, 2003

Contact:
Dawn Carr 020 7357 9229, ext 224; [email protected]

London – Covered only with a banner reading, ‘Bare Skin, Not Bear Skin’, on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), male models from London’s Images Modelling Agency will protest the slaughter of Canadian black bears who end up as bearskin hats for Her Majesty’s Household Guards.

Date: Tuesday, 21 October
Time: 12 noon sharp
Place: Corner of Bird Cage Walk and Buckingham Gate, near Buckingham Palace, London

It takes the entire hide of one to two bears to make just one Guardsman’s headpiece. In North America, the bears are shot or trapped in steel-jaw traps, which have been illegal in Britain for decades. Many bears are shot several times before they die, while some escape the hunters only to bleed to death. When the bears killed are mothers, orphaned cubs who cannot survive on their own are left behind. The Ministry of Defence claims that the use of the bears’ skins is acceptable because the British government simply feeds off the killing rather than ordering it, a position that PETA find indefensible. 

In March, current Miss Great Britain Yana Booth posed nude for a PETA ad condemning the Guardsmen’s use of bearskin and sent a letter to the Queen. Sir Roger Moore, the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, Hayley Mills, Julian Clary, Amanda Holden, Jerome Flynn, several MPs and many others have called on the Queen and the Ministry of Defence to replace the bearskins with synthetic, humane alternatives.

‘The cruelty involved in procuring bearskin hats for the Queen’s Guards is unjustified’, says PETA UK’s Dawn Carr. ‘We’re hoping that by baring their own skin, these models can help persuade Her Majesty to spare the bears’ skins.’

For more information, please visit PETA’s Web site PETAUK.org.