MPs Demand Fur-Free King’s Guards’ Caps at Parliament
London – Today (17 June), Members of Parliament gathered at Parliament Square Gardens to urge the Ministry of Defence to stop using the fur from slaughtered bears for the Royal Guards’ ceremonial caps and switch to a humane faux fur alternative. The MPs posed together with a banner that reads, “Bears Killed for the King’s Guard’s Caps. MoD: Go Fur Free.”
More photos are available here. Credit: Laurie Noble Photography
The protest follows recently released records showing that the MoD has increased orders of bearskin caps by 336% – rising from 22 caps in 2024 to 96 in 2025. Freedom of information requests obtained by PETA also reveal that the cost per cap has increased by nearly 8% during the same period, with each cap now costing taxpayers £2,361.
“Each bearskin cap costs a bear their life, making it indefensible to use taxpayer money on purely ornamental items,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “Parliamentarians and the public alike support a switch to faux fur. The MoD must stop dragging its feet and instruct its capmakers to find a humane alternative.”
The ministry purchases finished caps from capmakers who source bear fur from Canada, where the government issues “hunting tags” allowing hunters to kill an allotted number of bears and sell their pelts. The continued use of bear fur for caps creates a market for pelts and incentivises hunters to kill bears. A 2024 PETA video exposé revealed that hunters in Canada often bait bears with buckets of sweet food before shooting them with high-powered crossbows, a form of hunting illegal in the UK under wildlife protection laws. Many bears are shot several times, and some escape only to die slowly from blood loss, gangrene, starvation, or dehydration.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – notes that, according to a poll carried out by Populus, 75% of the UK public considers the bearskin caps a “bad use of Government funds.” For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
Contact:
Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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