Save the whales not whaling
Home » Blog » Save the whales not whalingWhen the whales need us the most, our government is abandoning our traditional allies in whale conservation and supporting a deal that undermines the ban on commercial whaling.
The New Zealand Government’s support for a proposal could usher in a new era of commercial whaling. Unsuprisingly, it has met with fierce opposition from the country’s animal welfare and environmental groups.
Collaborating under the banner of ‘Save the whales, not whaling’ the groups have announced petitions calling on the Government to reject any deal that would legitimise commercial whaling and allow hunting to continue in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
Earlier this month the New Zealand Government came out in support of a proposal to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that would allow Japan, Norway and Iceland to hunt whales openly if they agreed to reduce the total catch over the next ten years.
The results of the petitions will be presented to the Prime Minister, John Key, before New Zealand officials attend the June meeting of the IWC where a final decision on the proposal will be made.
The groups, which include Greenpeace, Project Jonah, Forest and Bird, World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), say the Government’s support of the proposal would undo decades of conservation work by Kiwis to protect whales.
New Zealand is abandoning its post as one of the staunchest defenders of whale welfare and conservation, the group says.
The New Zealand Government is supporting a deal that undermines the ban on commercial whaling. Many countries have invested considerable time and money into negotiating this deal over the last two years, but it is difficult to see how the deal is an improvement on the status quo.
"We appreciate that many countries, including New Zealand, have invested considerable time and money into negotiating this deal over the last two years, but it is difficult to see how it is an improvement on the status quo."
The deal, currently before the IWC, effectively lifts the moratorium on whaling, setting a dangerous and unprecedented endorsement of commercial whaling. Even if time-bound, such a move would inevitably create an expectation within the whaling industry (and in countries watching from the sidelines) that further quotas would be forthcoming. This would effectively postpone the IWC’s current deadlock to a later date.
It would also be impossible to guarantee that a package to benefit some IWC members in the short-term would not be used to open the floodgates in the future to other nations requesting coastal or ‘scientific’ whaling quotas, and planning to trade in whale products, allowing this cruel and unnecessary industry to expand worldwide.
Hunting whales is undeniably cruel. There is scientific evidence that there is no humane way to kill a whale, with some whales taking an hour or even longer to die.
Over the last 20 years the whaling nations have met with global condemnation for flouting the whaling ban and killing over 25,000 whales. To now reward this behaviour by offering up yet more whales is tantamount to waving the white flag of defeat.
