WWF states that the 62nd annual International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting ended on Saturday with governments failing to reach an agreement on a proposed package on whaling. The IWC meeting didn’t allow civil society and members of the news media. It was closed door meeting.
The Commission’s Chair has proposed a plan that attempted to reduce current whaling and bring it under the IWC’s control. But unfortunately the proposal failed to reach to any negotiation. WWF did not support the proposal as drafted, but was urging the IWC to find a solution that would at a minimum eliminate whaling in the Southern Ocean, a critical whale feeding ground, and halt whaling of threatened species.
Wendy Elliott, WWF International Species Manager, opines that the IWC has been at a standstill for several years now. While the Chair’s proposal was not acceptable as drafted, we are left with a situation in which yet again, Japan’s whaling fleet will kill hundreds of whales in the Southern Ocean in the name of ‘science’.
Wnedy states that at this IWC meeting, politics have yet again won over the conservation of whales. The IWC’s commercial whaling ban was one of the greatest conservation achievements of our time, saving many whale species from the brink of extinction.
Elliot says that the international community must implement a science-based recovery and management plan for the Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery at the next meeting of its management body, the International Commission on the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, in November.
