[Anonymous]

Japanese whale request rejected
Japan’s whalemeat cannot be traded internationally
Japan’s
long-term strategy to see a re-introduction of commercial whale hunting
has suffered another rebuff.Its motion asking the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to review whale
stocks was defeated.Approval for the motion, discussed at the CITES
summit in The Hague, could have led to a resumption in a legal trade in
whalemeat.

A similar proposal on fin whales by Iceland was also defeated.
The
CITES conference follows hard on the heels of the International Whaling
Commission annual meeting, which saw Japan suffer reverses on a number
of issues.”It’s a one-two punch for the whales,” said Patrick Ramage,
global whale programme manager with the International Fund for Animal
Welfare (Ifaw).”In the space of a week, the two leading institutions
charged with protecting wildlife have rejected efforts by Japan to
weaken protection for our planet’s great whales.”

Following suit
Historically,
CITES has followed IWC advice on whale stocks. Because the IWC
maintains a global moratorium on commercial hunting, international
trade in whalemeat is banned.However, with the IWC mired in deadlock
and with no sign of the 21-year moratorium being lifted, Japan has
viewed CITES as another route to opening the whale trade.A CITES
assessment that some stocks were robust enough to withstand a degree of
international trade would signal they were also robust enough to
sustain some commercial hunting.A number of governments and NGOs
supported Japan’s bid to have CITES re-evaluate whale stocks, with
Eugene Lapointe of the World Conservation Trust (IWMC) commenting:
“CITES has its own rules, its own criteria, and it’s just normal that
the listing of species is re-assessed.”The majority of delegates
disagreed, and the resolution was defeated. Japan had offered to fund
the re-assessment exercise.

Deep waters
The
introduction of the commercial whaling moratorium in 1986 was supposed
to be accompanied by an IWC global review of whale stocks. The fact
that it is a long way from completion is a major factor behind Japan’s
frustration.But Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation
Society, who attended the recent IWC scientific committee meeting,
defended the long timescale.”I can assure delegates that the scientific
review is indeed comprehensive,” he said.”But it’s not a simple matter
to assess species which spend so much time in the water, sometimes far
offshore; and where individuals are often virtually indistinguishable
from each other.”With these factors in mind, it is unreasonable and
unfair to suggest that CITES could produce something more thorough than
the IWC scientific advice.”The meeting passed an amendment saying that
CITES should not re-assess whale stocks while the commercial moratorium
remained in place.

[Author]

June 18, 2007 at 9:53 AM