Plymouth MP Faces Calls to End Ministry’s Purchase of Bearskin Caps

Plymouth — Animal protection group PETA has launched a new advertising campaign in Plymouth calling on local MP and Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard to end the Ministry of Defence’s use of real bear fur in the King’s Guards’ ceremonial caps. The advertisement, which appears near Pollard’s constituency office, follows a 336% increase in orders of bearskin caps since Labour came to power. Data obtained by PETA through Freedom of Information requests show that purchases rose from 22 caps in 2024 to 96 in 2025. The cost to taxpayers also increased, with each cap costing £2,361 in 2025.

The billboard is located at 13 Frankfort Gate, Plymouth PL1 1QA and will be live for 1 week. More images are available here. Credit: Trevor Burrows Photography.

“For every bearskin cap, a bear was baited by hunters and violently killed,” says Kate Werner, Senior Campaigns Manager. “Luke Pollard has an opportunity to bring the bearskin caps into the 21st century by replacing them with a humane faux-fur alternative – he must seize it. The public will not accept inaction while bears continue to be gunned down for ornamental headgear.”  

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 the caps creates a market for the pelts and incentivises hunters to kill the bears. A 2024 PETA video exposé revealed that hunters in Canada often bait the bears with buckets of sweet food before shooting them with guns and 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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