(Photo: Dr. Louis Herman | NOAA)
From Green Right Now Reports
A draft plan unveiled this week proposes to legalize commercial whaling for the first time since a 1986 moratorium made it illegal to hunt whales for commercial purposes. The plan was drafted by member countries of the International Whaling Commission, an international body that meets annually to set global policy on whaling and whale conservation.
The draft plan proposes to bring all whaling under the control of the IWC and legalize the activity in exchange for limitations. Those include reducing catches significantly from current levels, limiting whaling operations to those members who currently take whales and establishing caps to within sustainable levels for a 10 year period. there also would be enhanced monitoring and control measures.
Three IWC member countries – Japan, Norway, and Iceland – have never observed the moratorium and have continued to hunt whales. In recent years, Japan has recruited votes at the IWC to lift the ban on commercial whaling.
Several IWC members have been meeting in private since late 2009 to craft the proposed compromise. The draft proposal will now be considered at an IWC working group meeting in St. Pete Beach, Fla. beginning March 2. A version of the proposal will then be considered by the full membership of the IWC at June’s annual meeting in Agadir, Morocco.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare was immediately critical of the plan, saying it will provide “long-term conservation of whaling, not whales.”
“In return for insignificant, short-term concessions from Japan, Iceland and Norway, the IWC would legalize commercial whaling in the 21st century,” Patrick Ramage, IFAW’s Whale Program Director, said in a statement. ”This deal would be a sea change in a quarter century of whale conservation. It puts science on hold, the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary on ice, and no restrictions whatsoever on the international trade in whale meat. And after ten years, all bets are off — no more moratorium and much more whaling.”