Japan Pushes for Wider Whale Hunt



One of the environmental movement's greatest victories ? the 21-year-old ban on commercial whaling ? could be reversed at the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting this year.


It's Morning Edition from NPR News, I'm Steven Skip, and I'm Rena Mountain, good morning. The fate of a 21-year-old ban on commercial whaling is at stake. That ban is on the agenda of this week's annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Anchorage, Alaska. Both pro and anti-whaling forces have been recruiting nations to join the commission, it's an eleventh-hour effort to determine whether Japan should be allowed to resume commercial whaling. Elizabeth Arnold reports.

Airplane! Airplane!

A small plane, brightly painted with humpback whales taxies to a stop before a crowd of school children. Patrick Ramage has flown here from CapeCod with artwork from kids asking the International Whaling commission to block Japan from killing more than a thousand whales this season. His twelve-year-old son Henry is with him.

"We are bringing the artwork to the government officials to show them that whaling needs to stop. "

Henry's father Patrick of the International Fund for Animal Welfare is a veteran of these meetings and he says this time the outcome is too close to call.

"Japan wants to kill whales. Necessarily, they are willing to kill the International Whaling Commission in order to do it. We've seen a multi-year, persistent effort to recruit countries and achieve through the power of Japan's currency what they are unable to achieve with their science or powers of persuasion. "

But Ramage and delegates of anti-whaling nations have done some recruiting of their own. The result has been sort of an arms race, as each side tries to find yet another nation to join and vote their way. Laos, Croatia and Cyprus are some of the latest recruits. Since 1986, the IWC has banned whale hunting with just two exceptions: Nations may take a certain number of whales for scientific research and aboriginal people are allowed quotas for subsistence purposes. At last year's IWC meeting, Japan rallied a one-vote majority for a resolution ending the ban. But it was only symbolic as it takes a three-quarters vote to truly end. Mark Simmonds of the UK-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society says it sends a dangerous signal.

"So the question is, what's the big signal gonna be this year?"

Simmonds explains that the CITES meeting, the body that manages international trade in endangered wildlife, comes right after the IWC meeting.

And the messages that go from the IWC to the CITES meeting are really really important. Because CITES basically follows the line that the IWC takes. So as the IWC is saying, we have a moratorium. CITES says:" OK, well, we will have an international trade ban in all these whale products. "

Simmonds says last year's vote eroded support for trade restrictions and emboldened nations such as Iceland to commence whaling. Currently Japan kills a thousand whales a year under the IWC's scientific research loophole. And this year it plans to kill an additional fifty humpback whales, an endangered species. Joji Morishita, Japan's chief delegate says his country is misunderstood.

"What we are asking for is limited, regulated whaling for abundant species only. So you don't need to lift the moratorium, and we think the regulations and controls are very important. "

At this meeting, the commission must also renew or reject a five-year bowhead quota for subsistence whalers. The last time the so-called aboriginal quota was up, Japan tried to block it as leverage for resumption of their own whaling. Morishita says it is only fair to approve both.

"As long as both of them are utilizing their local resources in a sustainable manner, I don't think there should be any different treatment. "

But anti-whaling nations and groups such as the World Wildlife Fund say subsistence hunting which involves tiny boats and a limited number of whales is far different than commercial whaling.

Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society says with the IWC's membership expanding everyday, it's impossible to predict the outcome of either contentious issue.

"That the man with a vote count looks like the pro-conservation side probably just about has the majority, but it completely depends on who is sitting in their seats, at a particular time. And it's so close. "

Key votes are planned later this week. For NPR News, I am Elizabeth Arnold, in Anchorage