Anchorage meeting ends in victory for anti-whaling camp (Roundup)

Jun 1, 2007, 11:44 GMT

Anchorage, Alaska - Anti-whaling countries won a moral victory Thursday on the last day of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting with an overwhelming vote to maintain the worldwide ban on commercial whaling.

The 37-4 vote for the resolution came after pro-whaling countries boycotted it after their impending defeat became clear. The vote also overturned a resolution pushed through by pro-whaling countries at last year's meeting.

The St Kitts and Nevis Declaration, named for the 2006 meeting's Caribbean host country, had called the now 21-year whaling ban unnecessary and said the commission's mission should change from protecting whales to regulating commercial whaling. The resolution was non-binding, however, because the 33-32 vote that passed it was far short of the three-fourths supermajority needed for a binding resolution.

Thursday's resolution, again far short of the needed supermajority, declared the existing moratorium on commercial whaling important and a necessary means to protect the marine mammals.

Under pressure from anti-whaling countries, Japan withdrew a heavily criticized measure shortly before the end of the meeting that called for Japan's coastal communities to be allowed to hunt whales.

Japan, which kills the most whales in the world for what it calls scientific research, contended that such permission would be no different from giving indigenous peoples in Alaska, Greenland and Russia permission to hunt a limited number of whales for cultural and subsistence reasons.

But critics of the measure, who outnumbered its supporters, countered that the living standards of Japanese coastal communities could hardly be compared with those of the indigenous communities that won the commission's support this week to continue their hunts.

A 41-11 vote Thursday increased the number of minke whales that the growing population of Inuits in Greenland are allowed to hunt for their consumption each year from 175 to 200 and also added 19 fin whales and, by 2008, two bowhead whales to the yearly quota.

Denmark, however, withdrew its call for the indigenous communities in its semiautonomous territory to also be allowed to hunt humpback whales after the proposal was heavily criticized.

The commission's scientific committee estimated that about 180,000 minke whales live in the Atlantic and another 700,000 in the Antarctic but said it believes the humpback population has not regenerated itself to such an extent since the whaling ban was put into effect in 1986 and, therefore, its hunting should not be allowed.

The commission, whose membership grew to 77 countries at the current meeting, has seen years of wrangling between pro-whaling countries led by Japan and an anti-whaling bloc, which includes many European countries.

In recent years, both sides have raced to swell the commission rolls with countries previously uninvolved in whaling. The advantage clearly turned to the anti-whaling camp at the commission's 59th annual meeting as it added Cyprus, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia and Ecuador to its roster. The five joined the commission last year.

Germany, which is among the anti-whaling countries, expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the commission's meeting. Marlies Reimann, its delegation's leader and the deputy commissioner on the International Whaling Commission, said the anti-whaling countries were able to wield their majority to pass a number of measures.

But the environmental organization Greenpeace said the anti-whaling countries should not be content with the outcome because it said much more had to be done to protect whales.

Greenpeace marine biologist Thilo Maack said the commission failed to achieve a three-quarters majority needed to approve the establishment of a whale sanctuary in the southern Atlantic and while it condemned Japan's so-called scientific whaling programme, it was unable to stop the hunt, which its critics said is a veil for a commercial whaling programme.

'The times for whales remain bad,' Maack said. 'Genuine protective measures have not been decided. While the delegates talked themselves red in the face day after day over whaling, many thousands of whales became ensnared in fishing nets and died.'

He added that pollution also threatens their survival.

Pro-whaling countries also have another forum at which to fight. A conference on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species is to begin a two-week meeting Sunday in The Hague.

Nicolas Entrup with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said whale-protection groups would fight any attempts to weaken a ban on the commercial trade in whale meat, which he said would 'undermine the whaling moratorium and represent a big danger for the continuing existence of whales.'