June 22, 2005
protecting the whales
Good news from here at this meeting. Japan's motion calling for an end to the almost 20-year ban on commercial whaling has been defeated at the International Whaling Commission meeting in South Korea.
Ian Campbell,Australia's Federal Environment Minister, said Australia and other anti-whaling nations had wanted to send a strong message to Japan, and this had occurred.
"We were seriously on the edge of an abyss, with the chance of seeing the world step over the edge towards commercial whaling. This is a great result for all the Australians who campaigned against it."
This should be celebrated.
Then pressure needs to placed on Japan to abandon its push to resume commercial whaling and increase its scientific cull.From this perspective Japan's failure to swing an early majority vote behind the pro-whaling camp is not a victory for the whales - it is merely another reprieve.
Nicola Beynon, from the Humane Society International, and an adviser to the Australian Government's IWC delegation, said that:
"If Japan's recruiting drive continues to be so successful, they will be able to take us back to the bad old days."
Japan is pushing for the IWC to preserve whale stocks and make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry.
Japan is deeply opposed to Australia's position to keep the IWC as a whale preservation and protection organisation.
However, Japan lost its bid at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to do away with a decade-old whale sanctuary in the Antarctic that it said was no longer ecologically justified. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) also voted on Wednesday to urge Tokyo to cut its scientific whale hunt.