We’ve done our fair share of ranting about two well-known animal “rights” charities on this blog so I thought it was time to talk about donating to charity. There are many wonderful charities doing good deeds for people, animals, and the environment and they need the public’s support. There are also quite a few charities that aren’t very effective at what they do, or mislead the public about their activities.

If you are looking to donate money, and you want to feel confident the funds are going to good use, you may want to ask yourself these five questions about a charity before making a donation.

1. What are the primary services they provide? This should really be the primary reason why you are donating to a charity – because you want to help someone or something. But it is important to know exactly what the charity is doing, especially if it isn’t obvious in the name (or the name is misleading). You may also want to investigate if there are different branches or offices you can donate to. For example, the World Wildlife Fund allows you to donate to help the rhinos, tigers, or other species in need. If you have the choice of directing your funds to a specific project, then be sure to choose the one that is most important to you.

2. Are the programs effective? (And how is effectiveness measured?) This will require a bit of detective work but asking a charity outright how they measure their successes and whether they deem recent programs to have been successful is a great start.

3. What percentage of the dollar goes to providing the services and programs, versus administration or fundraising fees? A good benchmark is 60% - if the charity is spending less than 40% on administration and fundraising then the charity can be considered to be using its donations effectively.

4. How are they rated? There are lots of websites rating charities, using different criteria. Two major websites rating charities are Charity Navigator and the AIP’s Web site, Charity Watch (this site requires a $50 per year membership.)

SEE ALSO: WHY I WISH I DIDN'T LOATHE ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

5. What do the press say about them? A simple online search of your chosen charity can expose you to a lot of positive and negative information about their activities. It’s important to be as objective as possible, which is not always easy. Usually a simple search will help to figure out whether your chosen charity has a good reputation. There are organizations who expose the underhand or misleading activities of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals or The Humane Society of the United States - so if you are considering donating to either of these two charities, you may want to do some research at PETA Kills Animals or Humane Watch, first. Or maybe just donate to your local shelter, instead.

Here's some further reading on the topic, if you are looking to dig deeper:

• Forbes: Choosing a charity

New York Times: How to Choose a Charity Wisely

Charity Law Information Program: How to decide which charity to support

Ask most people what fur is good for and they’ll say it keeps the wearer – animal or human - warm. True enough, but some types of fur are so much warmer than others, and the reasons why may surprise you. In this first of a series to introduce some of the amazing facts about fur, we’ve planned a hunting and fishing trip and now it's time to plan our wardrobe. We’re headed to the Canadian territory of Nunavut, and we need to dress for the occasion!

Nunavut is actually the size of Western Europe, so even though almost the whole territory is classed as having a polar climate, there are considerable differences in weather and hours of sunlight. Time of year also makes a big difference. So let’s narrow it down and say we’re headed for the capital of Iqaluit at 63°N, in late March.

We’ll have about 6 hours of sunlight a day, enough for some good hunting or fishing close to home. But with average temperatures for March at -28°C, and a record low of -44°C, we can forget our birdspotter’s anorak. Heck, with wind chill factored in, the mercury once hit -62°C, so you might be tempted to leave your entire wardrobe at home, but don't. Jeans and sneakers will get a lot of use when we're not actually out on the land or ice.

It’s time to plan our new wardrobe and then figure out how to get it, because it's not going to be from your typical downtown furrier. Mink, fox or chinchilla are not up to the job, plus we'd prefer not to run up a huge cleaning bill on our return.

What we’re after is fur that’s full of holes.

Hollow Hairs Please

One of the key functions of fur in nature is thermoregulation: helping furbearers stay cool in hot weather and, more importantly, warm when it’s freezing. This is achieved primarily by means of insulation, and one of the greatest insulators is air. Or, to be more precise, trapped air.

Heat travels more slowly through air than through solids or liquids, (For comparison, water is 24 times more effective at conducting heat than air.) Furbearers take advantage of this by trapping air between the dense hairs of their underfur, then sealing it in with their long guard hairs. For us humans, it's a case of dressing in layers: two thin sweaters, with a layer of air between, keep us warmer than one thick one.

But some furbearers, mostly species of deer, have taken it to the next level. Not only do their guard hairs help trap air in the underfur, but those guard hairs also have air trapped permanently inside each one! Commonly known as “hollow” hairs, think more in terms of a honeycomb center, with countless tiny pockets of air. (Click here for an example of a scanning electron micrograph of red deer hairs.)

So we’re going to go with a local favourite in Nunavut, caribou fur.

Caribou must endure bitter cold for months at a time, and they don’t even shiver. How do they do it? It's not all in the fur; a highly efficient means of minimising heat loss known as countercurrent heat exchange functions in their legs and nasal passages. But the key is their winter coats, three inches thick and covering them from nose to hooves, all topped off with those hollow hairs. (Interestingly, it is also these hollow hairs that cause caribou to swim so high out of the water, further conserving heat.)

So we’ll start with a couple of knee-length parkas, not for alternate days but to wear as a pair if needed. The outer parka, worn on its own with the fur on the outside, will be for less cold weather or trips close to home when a sudden change in the weather just means a sprint home. The inner parka will be added, with the fur facing our body (yes, we'll need a shirt or other kind of lining!), when the mercury plummets or we're traveling farther afield.

Since we're not dressing to impress but looking for utilitarian wear, we'll go with plain parkas, not the decorated versions commonly associated with Inuit culture. Caribou hair sheds easily and the hollow shafts are constantly breaking, so decorated parkas are for special occasions only (and for sale to tourists).

And since it's not mid-winter, we'll go with summer caribou skins, which are also those generally used for garments. The hair is shorter than winter skins so they're not as warm, but this also makes them less prone to shedding. Summer skins are also easier to dress than winter skins, and while dressing is said to reduce warmth, it does make them more durable.

And if you're ready to go totally native, caribou pants and socks come next, both with the fur on the inside, then caribou mittens and kamik (traditional footwear) to round off your ensemble.

A word of caution though. Unless you're actually out on the land or ice, dressing head to toe in caribou will make you stand out from the crowd. Plus, propping up the bar in Iqaluit will very quickly cause you to overheat! That's where the jeans and sneakers come in.

Hydrophobic Hood

Before you shell out for your parkas, though, pay particular attention to their most important feature: the hood lining. It must be hydrophobic.

OK, we don’t literally want it to be “hydrophobic” or it would be scared of water. What we want is a strong “hydrophobic effect”, meaning it appears to repel water. (There is no actual repulsion involved, just an absence of attraction.)

The hydrophobic effect can be found everywhere and is essential to life on Earth. Observe a droplet of dew on a leaf. The water and the leaf want nothing to do with each other, to the point where the dew forms a sphere. The hydrophobic effect is also seen in all fur, but some types are more hydrophobic than others.

And why is a hydrophobic hood lining so important? Well, here’s what happens if you don’t have one. You’re out one day when a blizzard blows in and the temperature suddenly drops to -30°C. You pull up your hood with its big, fluffy synthetic lining and laugh at Mother Nature. Next thing you know, your breath is freezing on the lining which then freezes to your face. Lesson learned. You’ll never wear a synthetic hood lining again, at least not in the Arctic.

Better to do it right the first time and go with the ultimate in hydrophobic hood lining, wolverine fur. Since that is not always available, northern grey wolf makes an excellent second choice.

Nature’s Raincoat

But we also need a second outfit, still for time on the land, but for days when caribou will make us feel like a baked potato. The sky is clear and the forecast is for temperatures around freezing. There's a chance of rain and slush underfoot, so being waterproof is paramount. It's time for Nature’s raincoat, sealskin.

People from down south often assume sealskin must be the ultimate in cold-weather clothing, but it’s not the case, and that’s because the species used – mainly ringed seals, as in Nunavut, and harp seals – have no underfur. Sometimes known as "hair seals", their pelts are composed entirely of short, shiny guard hairs.

The "flat" fur that comes from hair seals is not as warm as "true" fur (with underfur), like caribou, but it has some real pluses. Because there is no underfur, sealskin is light. It is also incredibly durable, more so than any other flat fur like calf or antelope (which is why it's used to make rope). Its structure resists wind, its oil content repels rain, and its porosity allows it to breathe (which is why it also makes great tents).

And oh yes, it's virtually waterproof, which is why it's used to skin kayaks.

Sealskins, then, are the Arctic's warm, wet-weather clothing, "warm", of course, being a relative term. Mittens, a lighter parka, and most definitely sealskin boots therefore make it on to our shopping list.

Shopping Time

And now comes the hard part. It's so hard, in fact, that if you're planning a quick in-and-out visit to Nunavut, you're not going to be wearing caribou or ringed seal anyway, so just pack the best of the rest. Unfortunately, buying an outfit of traditional Nunavut clothing is, like hollow hairs and hydrophobia, amazing - amazingly hard!

Forget about buying outfits off the peg, in Iqaluit or anywhere else. It's not going to happen, though not for want of trying. Efforts have been made in Nunavut over the years to establish a garment industry with ensured availability from suppliers and standardised sizes and prices, but all to no end. The workforce with the necessary skills - older women, with kids to care for, working from home - have not taken to the idea of a production line.

So what to do? You can sign up for an expensive sport-hunting package and get the clothing, including a decorated parka made of dressed skins, thrown in. Finding someone to make it then becomes your tour operator's headache.

Or you turn up in Iqaluit, ask around, negotiate hard, and be prepared to pay $1,500+ for a plain caribou parka, pants, kamik and mittens - and that's summer skins, probably not dressed. If you're staying a month, it should be ready by the time you're heading home.

The good news is that Canadian harp seal garments can be bought on-line (here or here, for example), provided you don't live in a country that denies you the freedom to import them. Which brings us to the last amazing fact about seal fur.

Nonsensical Bans

Almost all sealskin garments come from healthy populations of either harp seals or ringed seals. So healthy are these populations that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies both harp and ringed seals as "Least Concern".

And yet two of the biggest potential markets for seal products, the US and the EU, are closed for no good reason.

SEE ALSO: EU SEALING POLICY IS HYPOCRITICAL, ANTI-DEMOCRATIC

The US has banned imports of all seal products since 1972 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, legislation that is fiercely defended by the nation's animal activist community.

In the EU, the ban went into effect in 2009, since when the European Commission has made a pig's ear of justifying it because it can't. Everyone knows the ban was passed not for any rational reason, or even to satisfy popular demand, but because it was bought and paid for by lobbyists in Brussels working for animal rights groups.

Now, true to their reputation for feeble-minded solutions (like the bendy banana law), Brussels' finest have sought to placate Canada's angry Inuit by exempting them from the ban. Not surprisingly, many Inuit representatives have called the gesture colonialistic and racist, so we'll see how that works out!

Truly, the politics of fur are no less amazing than the science and cultural traditions of this beautiful, warm and sustainable natural resource. Send us a postcard from Iqaluit!

The team over here at Truth About Fur had big plans to spend July loafing around at lakes, beaches, and parks, and enjoying summer. We figured the media would be quiet about fur since it is summer and people are focusing more on bikinis (and not only the ones made of fur). We couldn't have been more wrong, as July was a very busy month for fur, so let's start our Fur In The News July roundup with a subject close to my heart: fashion.

Fashion Loves Fur

Fendi hosted an haute couture fur fashion show, named Haute Fourrure, which was the first of its kind in the world of fur and high fashion. Featuring a collection of sublime coats, jackets, and other garments, the show not only confirmed Fendi's status as the top designer fashion house for fur, but also the fashion industry's undying love for pelts (pardon the pun). We covered the show on our blog, you can check out some photos of the details here or read about the one million dollar coat. (I'm waiting for it to go on sale.) Karl Lagerfeld, creative director at Fendi, did a great interview about fur and the show for WWD, the New York Times did an interesting piece about fur called Fur Is Back in Fashion and Debate, and Fortune wrote about fur's comeback, although we don't think it ever went out of style.

In other furry fashion news, we love these sealskin shoes, roadkill fashion is getting more column inches, this Canadian brand is doing some great things with recycled fur, and we love the designs of these Greenland fashion brands. On a sour note, Hugo Boss has decided to stop selling fur, but they've only been exposed as hypocrites because they are still selling leather. Let's not forget, fur IS a great fashion choice, and here are 5 reasons why.

Seals and the Deal

Since we are on the subject of seal fur fashion, we may as well mention the Rod Stewart debacle where he was photographed wearing a seal skin jacket in Canada at a fur retailer, then denied knowing it was seal. Sorry Rod, we don't believe you, but we are sorry that you feel the need to bow down to the pressure of the activists and that you apologized for wearing this beautiful, natural, sustainable material. Jim Winter, a contributor here at Truth About Fur, wrote an excellent piece about the hypocrisy of the anti-sealing movement and the EU ban.

And while you are reading Jim's blog post, you may as well click through to Terry's, too. Terry Vourantonis wrote a great piece entitled My Life in the Fur Trade, documenting his career in this wonderful industry.

Celebrities Behaving Badly

Rod Stewart wasn't the only celebrity acting silly last month. We were shocked to hear hip hop mogul Russell Simmons comparing horse-drawn carriages to concentration camps. Humane Watch have started a campaign to demand people stop comparing the use of animals to slavery and the Holocaust. And here's a piece about the four celebrities who "would rather go naked" back in the 90s, who are all now wearing fur.

What else have the activists been up to? Well, a few of them are facing prison time for releasing mink, and the folk at the RSPCA in the UK are being told to clean up their act and get rid of the extremist activists on their board.

At the Movies

Let's end this news roundup with some of our favourite videos of the month: this great video by A Trapper's Wife, this adorable baby polar bear, and our favourite website/TV channel right now: the bear cam in Alaska where you watch beautiful brown bears in action 24 hours a day (pictured above). Cancel your cable subscription, this is the only channel you'll ever need.

You’ve probably seen celebrities wearing fur coats and pelts all over the catwalk, but that’s not necessarily a reason to choose to invest in fur. Here are a few more reasons why it is a good fashion choice.

1. It is sustainable. Resources are not infinite on our planet, but the responsible use of animals is a safe and renewable way to clothe ourselves. Farmed and wild fur all come from species that are in abundance and whose populations are managed properly. Why buy synthetics made from petroleum by-products, when you can opt for fur? Read more about fur’s sustainability here.

2. It is long-lasting. How often do you see someone wearing their grandmother’s old polyester blouse? Probably not very often (although those things are most likely still clogging up our landfills). Fur is a long-lasting material; if cared for properly, you can easily get 30 years out of a well-made garment, but we’ve seen many older than that. We live in a time where we are increasingly concerned about waste and lack of resources, so it makes sense to buy things that are built to last. Here are some tips for ensuring your furs last a long time.

3. Your fur coat purchase probably supports a small business. The fur industry might be large, but most of the people involved in the supply chain are small farmers, designers, processors, or individual trappers. Many of us long to buy from small businesses who invest their earnings back into the communities they live in – so why not choose fur? If you want to meet some of the people involved in the fur industry, check out our Fur Family Album.

SEE ALSO: I'M AN ARTISAN DESIGNER; FUR AND LEATHER KEEP ME WARM

4. It’s local. Well, it is not always local, but if you are Canadian, American, Danish, Swedish, or from any other fur-producing country, there is a very good chance you can buy a product that was homegrown in your own country. Most fashion products have a complicated supply chain that involves sourcing raw materials, weaving, processing, and construction from all around the world, but there are plenty of fur products that are made, from start to finish, in the place the animal was raised. Read more about the industry and its members, by country, here.

5. It keeps you warm. There is no arguing that. Nothing beats being wrapped in a beautiful soft pelt. Even the technical companies who specialize in Arctic clothing insist on including fur (you know who I am talking about.) Read about why this famous outerwear company uses real fur.

Read more about the fur industry at www.truthaboutfur.com.

The European Union recently announced that products made from seals hunted by Inuit people can continue to be sold in the EU despite the 2009 ban that prevents the importation or sale of all other seal products. It is impossible to imagine a sealing policy that would be more hypocritical and anti-democratic.

Canadian sealing is a sustainable use of a natural resource carried out by licensed, well-trained sealers under the rules and regulations of the government of Canada, which have been developed based upon both population science and humane killing techniques. In 1971 a quota management program was established for the Northwest Atlantic harp seal stock, and the population is estimated to have grown since then from 1.8 million to the 5.9 million, according to the IUCN. World-wide the population is close to 8 million, with "All known stocks ... increasing in number".

Despite the comments of the animal rights groups, the world-wide markets for seal products (food, Omega-3 fatty acids, oil, fur, leather) continue to exist. They exist but are inaccessible because the decades-old animal rights propaganda campaigns have co-opted (bought?) politicians in the EU, the USA, and other countries to deny their citizens their democratic right to choose to buy seal products.

Even in its stronghold of North America, surveys suggest the animal rights philosophy (i.e., no animal use) is adhered to by less than 3 percent of people. And because of this lack of popular support, animal rights groups can only further their agenda by using their multi-million-dollar war chests to lobby politicians to pass laws denying citizens their right of choice: anti-democratic to say the least. Like autocrats throughout history, it seems that these wealthy activist groups don't trust individual citizens to do "the right thing".

Hypocrisy Everywhere

The World Trade Organisation enquiry found that the “seal ban” was against its rules, but in the interest of protecting the “morals” of EU citizens the ban would stand: thus buying into the animal rights propaganda that killing seals is immoral. An interesting decision given that many countries within the EU continue to kill seals legally in the Baltic and North seas.

The USA continues to allow harvesting of northern fur seals in the Pribilof Islands, creating an exemption to its own Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), despite the fact that the IUCN lists the species as "vulnerable" and cautions that the Pribilof stock "has experienced a significant, steep decline in recent years." Yet it bans the importation of Canadian seal products under the same MMPA, despite the fact that the harp seals killed have never, ever been on any reputable list (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, for example) of endangered or threatened species. Hypocrisy reigns supreme.

SEE ALSO: 5 REASONS WHY I SUPPORT THE CANADIAN SEAL HUNT

Inuit "Exemption" Almost Racist

Animal rights groups constantly make pious, politically correct statements that they are not against Inuit sealing. For decades, Inuit organisations (including the Inuit Circumpolar Council, or ICC, which represents Northern Aboriginal communities around the world) has rejected this “exemption” as being meaningless, based in a colonialist mentality, and little short of racism.

Thousands of rural Canadian citizens are directly and indirectly employed in the sealing industry earning a living for their families. Sealing is part of an annual mosaic of income for rural Canadians whose money is derived from a number of individual activities that in total provide a livelihood that enables them to live in their communities. The same thing applies to Canadian farmers, ranchers, trappers, hunters, and so on: the only difference is the species killed. Few rural Canadians have the luxury of a guaranteed annual salary.

SEE ALSO: AMAZING FACTS ABOUT FUR: DRESSING FOR THE ARCTIC

Animal rights groups keep on about a “buyout” for those in the sealing industry. A one-year buyout? A two-year buyout? Or an annual buyout till all those involved have died? For whom? For sealers, plant workers, truckers, diesel suppliers, insurance agents, garment manufacturers, artists, artisans, grocery suppliers, gun and ammunition stores, vehicle sales people? For all or only some of them? Will they pay the many millions involved? No. These American-headquartered multi-million-dollar groups want the Canadian tax payer to subsidize their ridiculous views.

Resource Use Is Not Disneyland

"Baby seals"? The use of the word "baby" is simply an anthropomorphism, the Bambi syndrome, designed to influence and upset urban people who have a total disconnect with the sources of their food, clothing, medicines and other objects of daily use. The seals killed are fully weaned, are independent of their dames, and are on their own to survive or not: this is nature, not Bambi in Disneyland.

Death by gunshot or hakapik is instantaneous as found by innumerable studies by independent vets from Canada, the USA and the EU. The only negative studies have been bought and paid for by animal rights groups. The reality is that no animal-killing is pretty: it is by nature ugly. But pretty and ugly are not synonyms for right and wrong or good and bad. Sealing is simply an outdoor abattoir without the offal problems of land-based abattoirs (dumping it in landfills) because what we cannot use we leave on the ice to return to the eco-system as food for birds, marine mammals, fish and crustaceans: ecologically correct and green.

Travesty of Fiction Over Fact

The reality of the 50 years of animal rights propaganda has been the diminution of the incomes of thousands of Canadian citizens while these American-headquartered groups have collected hundreds of millions of dollars from people who think they are supporting animal care and conservation. One group alone generates contributions close to $100 million annually.

To adapt Winston Churchill's famous turn of phrase, never have so many been so misled by so few for such nefarious reasons. For decades these groups have said nothing new, yet their comments are deemed “newsworthy”. They and their celebrity friends utter ridiculous comments and no journalists challenge them. It's a circus, a travesty of fiction over fact, and proof that hypocrisy reigns supreme. It is media manipulation of the highest order.

Propaganda is an insidious thing and unless countered by a free press prepared to ask the hard questions it will continue ad infinitum. It is time for individuals, politicians and media to remember the immortal line of Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

The anti-sealing story is the second greatest propaganda campaign of the last 85 years. Democracy is about the right of citizens to choose. History has shown us that when propaganda triumphs, democracy loses.

Nobody in the Canadian sealing industry wants people to buy their products if they do not wish to. Canadian sealers only want all citizens to have their democratic right to choose for themselves to use or not use seal products.

Animal rights is not animal conservation or animal welfare. The goal of animal rights groups like the Humane Society of the US (and its extension, Humane Society International) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, to name but two, is not to end sealing but rather to end man’s use - not just killing, but any use - of all animals for any reason. Read their mission statements. Seals are the tactic not the goal.

Anti-sealing is the epitome of George Orwell’s position in Animal Farm: all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

The animal rights anti-sealing movement may have won some battles but not the war. If it wins the war you will have to look around to see whom among you will be the next victim. The beef, pork, chicken or lamb producers? The trappers, hunters or fur farmers? The clothes manufacturer, shoemaker, auto manufacturer or furniture manufacturer? Anyone who uses animals for any purpose at all? You?

My life in the fur trade began as a teenager, back in 1968, with a summer job for a fur broker – a man who bought and sold fur pelts at wholesale. Although my family came from Greece (like many fur craftspeople), we were not furriers. But, like most immigrants, we were not wealthy and I needed to work to help ends meet. That first job changed my life; I had never imagined that such beautiful furs existed and I was hooked at first sight!

The owner took a liking to me, I guess, and taught me the ins and outs of examining, grading and buying fur pelts at the old Hudson’s Bay fur auction house that was in Montréal at that time. There was so much to discover and I was lucky to learn from the ground up: my understanding of how to judge different fur qualities would serve me well when I became a fur designer and manufacturer myself.

A few years later I was offered a job as a fur manufacturer’s sales representative, visiting retail fur shops across the continent with fur garment and accessory samples. Although it was difficult to leave my mentor, I wanted this opportunity to learn another part of the business. Because I had to work to make a living, I never had the opportunity to go to college or university. Work was my university.

One great advantage of my new job was that I had direct contact with fur stores and their customers. It didn’t take long before I understood that the traditional way fur coats were being made had not kept up with the times. Traditional coats were too bulky, too heavy. And there was an opportunity to use a wider range of furs than the few traditional staples (Persian lamb, muskrat, mink) that dominated the market. As retailers and suppliers began to have confidence in me, I decided it was time to create my own fur designs, incorporating my new ideas and made in my own atelier.

Family Affair

Two brothers and two sisters joined me in this exciting venture, and our company grew quickly. Soon I needed an associate, an expert furrier, to look after the production side, while I developed new designs and handled sales and public relations. I felt tremendous pride seeing my fur creations in some of the finest stores across North America. As we gained confidence, I showed our collection at the world’s largest fur fair at that time, in Frankfurt, Germany; we returned with orders from the fashion capitals of Europe, and as far away as Japan and South Korea.

It wasn’t always easy, of course – succeeding as a fur designer requires an impressive range of specialised knowledge and nerves of steel. For starters, unlike materials made in a factory, fur pelts are produced by nature and only available at certain times of the year. When the fur is prime, it is sold at auction. If you don’t buy then, you pay more to fur brokers (like my first boss), who make their living buying for others and keeping inventories for those who can’t afford to buy all the furs they may need during the year.

The tricky part is knowing which furs to buy, because you have to make samples before receiving any orders from the retailers. And you can’t take orders without having the furs to make them. If you bet wrong and don’t receive enough orders, how will you pay for the furs in your storeroom? But if you don’t have enough fur pelts in stock, you may have to pay more than expected to the fur broker, wiping out any hope of profit!

World's Lightest-Weight Beaver Pelts

You also have to know how to judge the quality of furs you buy. Our company became known for producing the finest Canadian sheared beaver coats and jackets in the world. Part of our success was weight: customers now want a lightweight garment, and I noticed that some beaver pelts were much lighter than others. It took me a while to understand that the lightest-weight furs came from Cree trappers in the James Bay region of Ontario and Quebec. One day, a Cree elder explained why.

After an animal is skinned, the leather side of the fur pelt must be scraped clean of any excess flesh or fat; the pelt is then stretched and dried before being sent to the auction. Most trappers do this work themselves, in a heated cabin or shed. Among the Cree, however, it is usually women who scrape the pelts, and they often do this work outdoors, in the cold Winter air, which makes it easier to remove all the fat. This makes their beaver pelts thinner and lighter weight, which was important traditionally because more pelts could be loaded into a freighter canoe. Today, their meticulous work still produces beautiful parchment-white leather and the lightest-weight beaver pelts in the world!

SEE ALSO: I'm an artisan designer: Fur and leather keep me warm

The Cree also helped me to understand one question that had bothered me: Why is nature so cruel as to decimate all beaver living in an area when populations get too dense? They explained that overpopulated beavers overwhelm their food supply; Tularemia and other diseases can then wipe out the malnourished animals. This is nature’s way to restore balance, because a devastated forest needs many years to regenerate. No regeneration would be possible, however, if beavers were still feasting on the tender, young aspen and willow saplings.

The beauty of well-regulated modern trapping is that the beaver populations can be maintained at stable and healthy levels, in balance with their environment, over long periods of time. That’s better for the beaver, better for the forest, and provides a beautiful natural clothing material to keep people warm in a sustainable way!

Caring vs. Knowing About Nature

I have lived my whole life in cities, but the fur trade taught me a lot about nature. We all care about nature, but “caring” without “knowing” is no use at all. Like aboriginal trappers, wildlife biologists spend years studying nature and how it works. Surely they know more about nature than self-appointed “animal-rights” activists. Paul McCartney and Brigitte Bardot may mean well, but they should probably stick to their music and acting ... and leave science to the scientists.

Socrates once said: “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life and the world around us. Once we know that, we understand why it is so important to respect other people – to learn from one another – instead of trying to impose our own values on everyone.

So next time you see or wear fur, think about the beauty and wonder of nature. And think about the hard-working and knowledgeable men and women who harvested your fur, and the skilled hands that crafted this remarkable natural material into the most comfortable and luxurious clothing material in the world!

Karl Lagerfeld celebrated 50 years with Fendi on July 8 by putting on an Haute Fourrure show, the first all-fur show in the history of the Paris Couture Shows. If further proof was needed that fur is now firmly embedded into mainstream fashion, this was it.

Fendi's Fall 2015 Haute Fourrure show was impressive in every way possible. Set in Paris's glamorous Théâtre de Champs-Élysees on the third night of couture fashion week, the show's 37 looks were a display of some of the finest skins and fur techniques in the world.

The collection featured both modern silhouettes and traditional coat shapes, adorned with fox tail trains, fur flowers, and textures that resembled feathers and prints. Some favourites over here at Truth About Fur included a pink and peach coat with fur-feathered raglan sleeves, and the dress version in white and cream underneath a beautiful and dramatic intarsia coat (both above).

Cherry Sundae Year for Fur

The Fendi show is the cherry on the sundae in a year that saw fur almost everywhere. In fact, 70% of the North American and European designer shows this season included fur. (For a full list and collection review, visit the blog Fur Insider.) Designers have clearly been seduced by this most luxurious of materials and by the innovative techniques that allow them to be creative with fur like never before.

Equally important, designers like to be reassured that the fur they use comes from animals that were treated humanely. As next-generation designer Jason Wu said in this recent New York Times article, designers can now source furs with the assurance that animal welfare standards have been respected.

Celebrities, high-profile models and bloggers are also embracing fur. In fact, four of the five top models who first launched PETA’s “I would rather go naked …” campaign have all appeared in fur since then.

The trend is so strong that even activist groups are now obliged to admit that, despite all their efforts, fur is stronger than ever. As Ecorazzi commented in this recent post, “Well, this sucks. From the looks of the recent Paris runways, fur is definitely not going anywhere anytime soon."

Sales Figures Soaring

Consumers are clearly feeling reassured too, because sales are soaring.

Figures developed by Price Waterhouse Cooper for the International Fur Federation show that the global fur trade is now valued at more than $40 billion worldwide – roughly the same as the global Wi-Fi industry. Global fur retail sales are estimated at $35.8 billion, and total employment in the fur sector numbers over one million. This is not negligible for an industry that is made up of mostly family-run farms, independent trappers and skilled artisans.

The industry is especially relevant for North America, where it accounts for more than $1.3 billion in sales annually and provides income for more than 100,000 people across the continent.

The fur industry is clearly doing a better job of informing customers that they are making an ethical fashion choice. The message that the modern fur trade is a responsible and sustainable industry is being promoted by a number of groups including IFF (Origin Assured), the new FurEurope … and in North America with our own Truth About Fur campaign!

There are many arguments in support of fur, but Lagerfeld has said it most succinctly, so it is appropriate to let this great designer have the last word: “In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish!”

All images from Style.com, see the entire show here.

June was a busy month for mink, one of our favourite farmed animals and so much cuter than cows, right? So let's start our Fur in the News roundup with a mink farm attack in Ontario, Canada, where animal extremists (who later claimed responsibility) released 1,600 mink from their pens. Normally farmers manage to retrieve a lot of their animals following such attacks, but this time there was another danger: the mink were new mothers, and the lives of their tiny kits were put at great risk due to the cold temperature and their need to feed constantly.

For a change, it was our turn to show disturbing photos of animal suffering, because many of the mink did not run off to start a wonderful new life in the wild. Read our piece: Mink Liberation : 5 Facts the ALF Doesn’t Want You to Know.

Does all this talk about mink farming put you in the mood to learn more? Then check out our new series entitled A Year on A Mink Farm (see above). Part 1 is about breeding and Part 2 is about whelping and weaning.

Dumb and Dumber

June wasn't a good month for the animal rights extremists (insert fist pump here) because they did some stupid things and the media took note.

First of all, the British weren't too impressed when PETA demanded that Britain's oldest pub, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, change its name.

French former actress and long-time animal activist Brigitte Bardot looked incredibly foolish when she wrote an anti-fur letter to Karl Lagerfeld's cat, Choupette. (For the record, I think Choupette is pro fur, like her Dad.)

And PETA's most recent campaign, against crocodile farming, seems really stupid as hardly anyone can afford a $37,000 bag, anyway.

The law has been cracking down on the extremists, with a few of them set to do jail time for releasing mink, chaining oneself to an excavator, or embezzling funds from donors. We also loved this article, from VICE: The 'Extremist' Factor: Why British Animal Rights Campaigners Aren't Taken Seriously.

Now Back to Business

A few interesting articles on the business of fur came out in June, including this series of articles for and against fur on the Business of Fashion, this piece about using the fur trade model to fix Canada's aboriginal woes, and an interesting CNN piece on fur's new markets.

Bits and Bobs

• Rapper A$AP Rocky is starting his own collection of fur coats.
• The mayor of Des Moines is also a furrier.
• Great advice on how to protect your farm from undercover video situations.
• Canada is checking out the market for seal penis.
• A very good question: Why don’t veal and lamb evoke the same outrage as baby seals?
• Putting baby to sleep on animal fur may lower asthma risk. (Hell, we should ALL sleep on fur, right?!)

Best Motion Picture Nominations ...

It was a great month for videos over here at Truth About Fur. Our most popular Facebook posts were this hilarious polar bear dreading to go to work on a Monday (image above), and this Norwegian hunter who has adopted two absolutely adorable fawns.

We loved this VICE feature on YouTube's most famous Canadian trapper, and if you are looking for some new series to watch over the summer, look no further than the Katmai National Park live bear cam - documenting naps, fishing, and general furry cuteness all summer. This is reality television at its best.

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Have you ever visited a mink farm? Are you interested to know more about the care farmed mink receive? Senior Truth About Fur writer Alan Herscovici asked "Les", a third-generation Nova Scotia mink farmer, to give us a personal tour and explain the work he does during a typical year. In Part 1: Breeding, Les explained the beginning of the mink production cycle that takes place in Spring. Now we move on to the period April - June and Part 2: Whelping and Weaning.

Truth About Fur (TaF): When are the young mink born and what do you do to prepare for them?

“Les” (Nova Scotia mink farmer): Some of the first litters can come as early as mid-April. Most are born towards the end of April, beginning of May. Even before the young are born, however, the mink farmer has plenty of work to do.

First we prepare the pens to receive young mink, or “kits”, by covering the regular 1 ½-inch by 1-inch flooring mesh with a ½-inch by 1-inch plastic-coated mesh. This does not allow manure to fall away as easily, but it protects the small kits.

We also install a plastic funnel guard at the entrance of the nest box, to keep in the straw or wood shavings that will make a warm nest when the kits are born. We are constantly building up those shavings and forming them into a bowl shape, to keep the kits near the centre of the nest where the mother can nurse them and keep them warm. When you are preparing nest boxes like this for several thousand females, it keeps you pretty busy!

TaF: Is there anything special you do when the kits are born?

Les: Whelping is one of the busiest times on a mink farm. From first thing in the morning until late at night we are in the barns, checking to see who’s been born, ensuring that their bedding is in a good shape to keep the kits in the centre of the box.

We are also watching for any kits that may be born tangled in their umbilical cords. 99% of the time, the moms take good care of things themselves: eating the placentas, cleaning and nursing the babies. But sometimes you will have five babies wound together in the umbilical cords so tightly that the mother can’t free them. We take them to the little surgery section of the barn where we have heat lamps and scalpels. Once we’ve cut them free and cleaned them up, we return them to their mothers.

While we’re ensuring that the new-borns are safe, we are also watching the kits born over the past few days, to be sure they are warm enough and nursing well. We are also on the look-out for little ones that are not getting enough milk; perhaps there are too many kits in the litter. You learn to recognize their weak, hungry cries. If necessary, we may move a kit to an adoptive mother with a smaller litter.

TaF: Mink will adopt kits from another female?

Les: Often they will. You pick a female that is doing a good job caring for a small litter, and hold the tiny, young kit near her. If she snaps at it, you try another female. But if she sniffs and licks it, then you can slowly slide the kit beside her and usually she will care for it with the rest of her litter.

TaF: All this sounds like a lot of work with so many young mink.

Les: It is! During this whole period we are checking every litter several times each day. Newborn mink kits are tiny. At birth, their eyes are still closed and they have no fur, so they are very prone to hypothermia. In addition to a good bed of shavings, we keep a plywood cover over the nest box for a while, to keep in heat.

TaF: And when are the kits weaned?

Les: As the kits get bigger, we remove the plastic shield and move the food and water closer to the nest box. There is also a shelf in the pen area where the female can get away from the kits, to rest herself and encourage her young to fend for themselves.

At about one month, they will start licking at the fresh feed we put on the pens every day, and then it’s a few more weeks before they are fully weaned.

By mid-June, we can also start removing the small gauge mesh from the floor of the pens, to keep them cleaner. This continues through into late June for the litters born later. It is good that the litters are not all born at the same time; it helps to spread out the work!

TaF: It must be very satisfying to see the kits come out of the nest box and feed themselves.

Les: It is, because we have been working very hard to ensure that they make it. It is so strange - insulting really - when some activists claim that we are cruel to our animals, because we work so hard to ensure that they are healthy. We are watching for signs of dehydration, of hypothermia; it takes so much experience and concentration to watch for all the things that can go wrong with young animals. If you don’t love working with animals and caring for them, you probably shouldn’t be a mink farmer!

TaF: And how did you become a mink farmer, Les?

Les: I am the third generation of mink farmers in my family, and before that there were two more generations who were trappers and early experimenters with breeding mink in captivity. So I guess mink farming is in my genes. I enjoy working with animals, and I enjoy working with mink. It’s a passion, for sure!

***

SEE ALSO: A YEAR ON A MINK FARM. PART 1: BREEDING, PART 3: GROWING UP, AND PART 4: FUR TIME

SEE ALSO: WHY IS AMERICAN MINK THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE FUR?

What really happens when misguided animal-rights zealots break into fur farms, cut fences, open cages and “liberate” mink? Here are five facts about "mink liberation" the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and their activist cheerleaders don’t want you to know!

1. Most “liberated” mink don’t enjoy their “freedom” for long!

Farmed mink are not wild animals. They have been raised in captivity for more than 100 generations - that’s more than 2,000 years in human terms - and are ill-equipped to fend for themselves in nature.

In fact, farmed mink have been selectively bred to be less aggressive and have never had to hunt for their food. Many “liberated” mink therefore die from dehydration or starvation. And because they associate the sound of vehicles with the arrival of the farmer’s motorized feed cart, many are attracted to roads where they are run over by cars.

In their boastful press releases, activists never show the mangled results of these deadly encounters. The media also generally choose to protect public sensibilities. But mink farmers are left to clean up the remains of animals they cared for since birth.

The carnage is not pretty, but we decided that the public has a right to see the truth about these mink “liberations”. I took the following picture last Fall on the road outside a Quebec mink farm, the day after activists broke in and released several hundred mink. So far, no one has been charged for intentionally subjecting mink to the suffering you see here:

2. Mink that do survive, wreak havoc on local livestock and biodiversity

Inevitably, some “liberated” mink do survive, at least for a while, and especially if neighbours keep an outdoor chicken run or duck pond! The results are not good for the chickens and ducks.

Mink are notorious for going into a murderous feeding frenzy when the opportunity arises; they will bloodily wipe out dozens of hens or ducks within minutes.

Even more worrisome for biologists is the potential for the transmission of disease, to and from wild populations, and the possibility of weakening the gene pool if even a few domesticated mink survive long enough to mate with their wild cousins.

3. Releasing nursing females is just plain stupid!

Releasing farm-raised mink is never a good idea, but it takes a special sort of idiot to break into a farm while the females are nursing their young. This is exactly what some still-unidentified pea-brains did last month in southern Ontario. During the night of May 30-31, they cut the perimeter fence of a mink farm near the town of St. Mary’s and opened the cages of 1,600 nursing females.

The young kits, just 2-4 weeks old, are completely dependent on their mothers. With little or no fur (some still won’t even have their eyes open), they can easily die from hypothermia or dehydration. The farmers spend long hours in the barn through this critical period, to ensure that the kits are nursing and well cared for.

Luckily, most of the females "liberated" in St. Mary's did not go very far when their cages were opened, precisely because their young kits were nearby. So most of the females were quickly rescued, but there was no way of knowing which litters belonged to which!

Farmers will sometimes move nursing kits from large litters to be adopted by a female with fewer young. But this is done slowly and carefully, to ensure that the female will accept her new charge. But in St. Mary's, there was no choice but to return the females to cages at random, and hope that their maternal instinct would win out.

4. The livelihood of small family farms is put in jeopardy

A farm invasion is clearly very damaging: the female mink have been fed and cared for since the previous year, and the kits represent the income needed to cover these and other expenses. The damage to the livelihood of the farm family, however, goes far beyond these immediate losses.

The success of a mink farm is directly related to the quality of the fur produced. Fur quality, in turn, is determined by nutrition and care, but also by genetics. Each year, mink farmers carefully select the animals they will retain for reproduction; they are constantly working to improve the quality of their herd.

Tragically, although most “liberated” mink are quickly recovered, their genetic history is usually lost. Breeding records are kept on cards attached to the mink pens. But there is no way to know which pens the recovered mink were released from. Since many North American farms are now operated by a second or third generation of the family, decades of genetic records - and work - are lost.

ALF criminals know all this: on their websites they brag about destroying breeding records and encourage others to do the same. How can these misguided activists claim to be “non-violent” when they destroy the life-work of several generations?

5. Mink “liberations” are a direct attack on democracy and everyone’s freedom!

The recent attack on the St. Mary’s, Ontario mink farm occurred on a weekend billed by radical extremists as “a day of direct action”.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by an anonymous group in a "communiqué" (ALF's preferred term for a press release) posted by the “Animal Liberation Press Office”.

SEE ALSO: AFTER 50 YEARS, FUR TRADE TURNS TABLES ON ACTIVISTS

The communiqué makes chilling reading for anyone who values democracy and personal freedom. In addition to the muddled collection of misinformation (e.g., claims that farmed mink are “mercilessly trapped in painful leghold traps” and suffer “a painful and agonizing death” on farms), the text states openly that Animal Liberation Front activists are using “economic sabotage” to raise costs for people working with animals, with the goal of putting them out of business.

On a personal level, farmers and their families are being terrorized by these attacks on their property, their animals and their livelihoods. (Intruders are sometimes armed with baseball bats and other weapons.) On a broader level, it is all of society that is threatened by people who think their beliefs give them the right to break into private property and sabotage legal businesses.

And what do mainstream animal activist groups say about such criminal activity? Unfortunately, they often resort to Orwellian doublespeak: “We do not support illegal activity,” they insist. “But we understand why some people feel the need to stop this industry at any cost!”

Nice try. But we can turn this doublespeak on its head: if mainstream groups did not play so fast and loose with the facts in their verbal attacks on the fur trade, perhaps impressionable young activists would not be lured into such criminal activity!

***

What else do you think ALF doesn't want us to know about mink "liberation"? Please leave a comment below! And see what Fur Commission USA has to say about mink "liberation".

Let's start this month's Fur in the News roundup by reminding everyone about our new project, the Fur Family Album. The story of fur starts long before a fancy coat is seen on a catwalk or photographed on a celebrity. It starts with the trapline or the farm, then the auction, the processing, the design, the making, and the store. Help us to tell the real story of the fur industry by sending us photographs of your experience of fur. Please read our full introduction to this project and then familiarize yourself with our submission requirements.

Around the World in Fur

Now, we are going to take a little trip around the world and look at the fur news stories that made headlines in different countries. Let's start in Seoul, Korea (above), where some pedestrians got a shock when an animal rights activist ripped hair from their heads, in a pathetic attempt to protest angora. I can't see how violence towards passersby is going to further animal activists' cause, but then again, I don't understand much of anything they do.

Let's move to Europe, to Germany specifically, where another activist planted needles into meat in a supermarket as a protest against the meat industry. The words "mad cow" come to mind!

Moving over to England, where a soap opera actress led a protest in front of Harvey Nichols to express anger at the store's decision to start selling fur again. Apparently her cause isn't that popular as she was the only person who turned up to the protest. Activists all over England were busy doing crazy things, including threatening to burn a TV presenter's children because of a BBC investigation into badger culls. Interesting that they want to save the badgers but burn children.

But maybe the craziest activist of the month award goes to English singer Morrissey who used Ireland's gay marriage referendum as a platform to remind people that meat and fur farming is bad, and meat eaters are no better than paedophiles. No words to describe his comments ... no words ... Finally for England, Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq played in London last month and that prompted some press about her music, her distaste for PETA and her support of sealing.

Back over the Channel in continental Europe, we had a demonstration of seal hunters at the EU parliament, who are trying to convince them to reverse the ban. The Guardian also wrote a good piece on this subject.

North American Fur News

Meawhile across the pond, a Los Angeles Times journalist wrote a fantastic op-ed about the hypocrisy of meat-eating fur haters. This is a subject that seems to be gaining traction and it is great that people are finally starting to recognize this issue. But unfortunately not all Americans are being reasonable, as quite a few of them seem to want animals to have the same rights as humans. Does this mean we can't legally kill a mosquito? People standing up to the activists include hunter and angler Peter Ryan, who does not take kindly to being threatened on Facebook, and this HSUS whistleblower.

Let's end in Canada with a lovely seal dinner and some nice sealskin clothes for your closet, shall we? But beware of crazy shoplifting seals, like this one, who stormed a grocery store in search of fish and took off when he realized that the goods he planned to steal were fruit. That's what I do when I find out that the dinner host is serving vegan!

Have you ever visited a mink farm? Are you interested to know more about the care farmed mink receive? Senior Truth About Fur writer Alan Herscovici asked "Les", a third-generation Nova Scotia mink farmer, to give us a personal tour and to explain the work he does during a typical year on a mink farm. In this first installment, Les explains the beginning of the mink production cycle: breeding. Welcome to Spring on a mink farm!

Truth About Fur (TaF): What does Spring mean for you on the mink farm?

Les (Nova Scotia mink farmer): Like most farmers, our production cycle begins in the Spring. As the days get longer in the first half of March, it’s breeding season for the mink.

We will have selected our breeding stock back in November/December. In choosing breeders, we take several factors into account. We are looking for size, fur colour and quality, for sure. But we are also watching for females that produce larger litters and take good care of their young.

We also want mink that are easy to handle and that thrive in the farm environment.

Not least important, we select for resistance to disease; we use blood tests to help identify the most disease-resistant animals for reproduction. We are constantly working to improve the genetic quality of our herd, for health, temperament and fur quality.

SEE ALSO: A YEAR ON A MINK FARM. PART 2: WHELPING AND WEANING

TaF: How are mink bred?

Les: It’s all natural, there’s no artificial insemination. For breeding, we bring the females to the males because they are easier to manage.

On our farm we have done something to make this much easier: instead of catching the female to move her, we developed removable and interchangeable nest boxes. When the female is in her nest box, we can close the door to her larger pen with a sliding panel. We carry her nest box, with the female in it, to the male’s pen and insert it there in place of his, after shooing the male into his pen. Then all we have to do is open the sliding panel and the party begins.

After mating, the female will return to her nest box, which is her territory. We close the sliding panel and bring her back to her pen. The whole operation is completed without handling the animals, with no trouble or stress for either mink or people!

TaF: Do males breed more than one female?

Les: Yes, each male is usually mated with about five females. When we introduce a female into a male’s pen, we watch to be sure that mating occurs and record that date. The female will be bred with a second male about a week later, because ovulation in mink is provoked by intercourse. The second mating also provides insurance in case the first male was infertile. We try to breed our females three times, for maximum assurance.

TaF: What happens next?

Les: It is important to disturb the mink as little as possible during the period when the fertilized eggs are implanting. Some producers will increase the hours of light in the barn during this period, but we find that the natural lengthening of the days is sufficient for implantation and gestation. We will also decrease the fat in the females’ diet and increase the percentage of protein during gestation.

***

SEE ALSO: A YEAR ON A MINK FARM. PART 2: WHELPING AND WEANING, PART 3: GROWING UP, AND PART 4: FUR TIME

SEE ALSO: WHY IS AMERICAN MINK THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE FUR?