Is the Fur Industry Quietly Shuttering?
By Joshua Katcher
*updated November 13th
The North American Fur Traders Association and Kopenhagen Furs are liquidating, mink farms are being wiped out by COVID-19, and younger shoppers want cruelty-free fashion.
The world’s two largest fur auction houses are both closing down.
Kopenhagen Furs announced on Friday November 13th that they’d be liquidating their assets, and just days earlier, the North American Fur Traders Association quietly began liquidating their headquarters and has deleted their website.
It was a desire for lucrative pelts that lured large waves of European colonizers to North America. By the time the British Government’s Hudson Bay Company was founded in 1670, the Eurasian Beaver had been pushed to near extinction by the fashion industry, and so fur businesses set out in search of more beaver pelts to satisfy a seemingly insatiable demand for fur felt hats. The overhunting of millions-upon-millions of beavers in North America had a devastating impact on ecosystems, rapidly and forever-changing the landscape from one with millions of beaver dam catchments of biologically rich and intricate networks of ponds, bogs, and openings in meadows and forests to a more uniform and dry terrain.
