The blood of baby seals stains the snow red during the traditional cull in the Archangel region of northern Russia each March. But the slaughter of thousands of seals, many only a few days old, has been halted this year amid protests by celebrities and environmental groups, and calls for hunting to be outlawed.

Officials in Archangel insisted that the cull had been cancelled to protect the hunters, not the seals, because ice sheets close to the White Sea were too thin to walk on.

The decision, however, came at a time of heightened protests by animal rights groups. Russian television broadcast a demonstration in Archangel by a group of celebrities and prominent journalists against the practice.

Hunters were shown clubbing baby seals with ice picks, leaving them to bleed to death before they were skinned for their white fur. One report showed a seal struggling for life in icy water surrounded by its own blood.

“They are very much like human babies - they cry and call for their mum the same way,” one protester, Laima Vaikule, a Latvian pop singer, said. Viktor Gusev, a sports commentator who was also protesting, said: “I am sure that there is need for a serious draft law to put an end to those killings.”

About 335,000 people have signed a petition against the hunting of baby seals, according to Oleg Mitvol, the powerful deputy chief of the Russian environmental monitoring agency. It noted that the killing of the youngest seals, known as whitecoats, “is authorised only in Russia”.

Annual quotas allow up to 35,000 baby seals to be killed in the White Sea during ten days in March, according to the State Committee for Fisheries. Sergei Tarasov, deputy chief of the regional committee in Archangel, told The Times: “If the ice was harder then of course there would be a hunt, but the ice is too weak and it's too dangerous for people. I myself went out in a helicopter to check it.”

But a spokeswoman for Nikolai Kiselyov, the Governor of Archangel, said that the regional administration was seeking to end the cull. She said: “We have asked the state committee to work on legislation to ban this trade for humanitarian reasons.” The ban has angered local villagers, or Pomors, who claim that the trade is vital to their survival. Pavel Osipov, the leader of one community, said that it posed “a serious threat to the centuries-old Pomor fishing tradition”.

Fur coats remain de rigueur for most Russian women and there is no stigma attached to wearing one. Environmental activism is in its infancy, although public outrage at the risk of pollution from a planned oil pipeline within 800 metres of Lake Baikal prompted President Putin to order last-minute changes to the route in 2006.

Mr Putin vetoed legislation in 2000 that would have banned seal hunting despite a 273-1 vote in favour in parliament. Russia has a strong tradition of hunting for sport and attempts to curb it would be politically unpopular.

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