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Eco Issue 4Proposal will be back on next year's agenda Japan and the Caribbeans Harpoon Plans for SanctuaryIn one of the most important votes of this year's IWC meeting, the Commission yesterday failed to achieve the 3/4 majority necessary for adoption of the Southern Pacific Sanctuary. The final vote was 18 YES, 11 NO, with 4 abstentions. Japan and Norway—flanked by 7 of their patron states and Denmark—provided an insurmountable blocking vote. Notable votes included Ireland, which abstained as a concession to Japan in trying to breathe life into the withering"Irish Proposal." The Solomon Islands went AWOL on the vote, unable to provide their normal unquestioning support for Japan under the watchful eye of the South Pacific Regional Environment Program. Wavering countries South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland all came through with YES votes, while Denmark turned to a NO. Although the Japanese whalers may have dodged a bullet this year, their celebration will be temporary. Australia and New Zealand have vowed to bring the South Pacific Sanctuary back for reconsideration next year in London. The case for the Sanctuary willbe stronger, and its chances for passage will be improved. YES:Australia NO:Antigua and Barbuda ABSTAIN:Ireland ABSENT:Italy Right Whales Face ExtinctionThe most endangered great whale species in the world is headed toward extinction. According to the WWF, the Northern Right whales, with a total population estimated at from 300 to 600 animals, will disappear unless the United States and Canada take immediate steps to protect it. There are new fears for the future of one whale species, the Northern Right whale of the western Atlantic. Only one calf has been sighted during the 2000 calving season. WWF believes the species could disappear from the Atlantic if the United States and Canada do not do more to protect it. The Northern Right whales' main feeding grounds are off Nova Scotia, Maine and Massachusetts. Despite full protection since 1937, the population has shown no sign of recovery. The population is still falling. Only 38 percent of the female Northern right whales are reproductively active. Only six new calves were recorded in 1998, only three in 1999, and just one so far this year. The Northern rightsface threats from pollution and fishing nets. However the most severe threat is collisions with ships. Ninety percent of all right whale deaths have been attributed to ship strikes. Conservation groups have called for the establishment of ship-free zones covering the main calving and feeding grounds. Whales caught in fishing nets can drown.Whale groups want the United States and Canada to introduce modifications to fishing gear, and to impose seasonal closures of the fisheries involved, in order to reducewhat it says is an unacceptably high death rate. Genes Don't LieRecent undercover DNA tests of whalemeat sold in Japanese restaurants have demonstrated that Japan's "scientific" whaling could drive a unique group of minkes to extinction, according to a new report published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society and reported this week by New Scientist. Drs. Scott Baker and Gina Lento of the University of Auckland and Drs. Stephen Palumbi and Frank Cipriano of Harvard University, enlisted people to buy whalemeat at Japanese restaurants and markets. The whalemeat was then DNA tested to determine its origin. The majority of the meat should have tested out from the "scientific" catch of Antarctic minke whales, with the rest from the North Pacific minkes found to the east of Japan, that are called "O stock." According to Baker and Palumbi, however, the DNA tests showed that approximately 30 percent of the meat from North Pacific minkes was from the "J Stock." This subgroup from the Sea of Japan has a total population of less than 2,000, and Japan's official figures only indicate about 15 animals taken from this stock as bycatch. Something doesn't add up. Palumbi stated that the "J stock" is in serious trouble and that the apparent high level of "unreported" catches could drive the number of mature females below critical levels. Although Japan claims that the analysis by Baker and colleagues is unreliable, results from a 1999-2000 market survey by Japan's own Fisheries Agency found 44 percent "J Stock"animals in the meat traced to North Pacific minkes. Enviro-Nyet!The new Putin regime in Russia may have sounded the death knell for progressive environmental protection reforms. A recent story in The Economist tells the grim tale: MOSCOW: Even in the democratic heyday of post-communism, Russia was a tough place for greens. Where the right laws existed, they were hard to enforce. A combination of abundant natural wealth, plenty of space and careless habits meant that few Russians took environmental housekeeping seriously. Now, a mix of business interests, criminal activity and governmental paranoia threatens to make matters even worse. Last month President Vladimir Putin abolished the main agency for environmental protection, handing over its central functions to its chief bureaucratic rival, the Ministry for Natural Resources. Environmentalists say that this amounts to putting an alcoholic in charge of the vodka store. Though it is true that, like many of its other laws, Russia's environmental rules (and the bureaucrats who enforce them) can be maddeningly pedantic, contradictory and susceptible to corruption, abolishing the agency that monitors them seems an unhelpful solution. Environmentalists believe that the agency was axed under pressure from powerful business interests, which argue that green regulation in blocking development. "The people now in power think that ecology is for rich countries," says Alexei Yablokov, president of the Centre for Environmental Policy, a pressure-group. Gangsters who profit hugely from illegal logging and fishing are another powerful force. Their activity contributes to a largely invisible environmental catastrophe in the remoter parts of Russia. Natural resources are plundered on a stupendous, unsustainable scale. The ministry now in charge at once announced that it would "simplify" the environmental rules governing industry, suggesting a further relaxation of controls that have already proved ineffective. The government has made a few rhetorical nods to the environmental cause, for example by promising to protect the embattled sturgeon, the fish that produces caviare. It has also allowed Russia's best-known environmental campaigner, Alexander Nikitin, to leave the country after his acquittal on charges of treason. But there is little sign that Mr. Putin cares about the environment. Last year, when he was still head of the security service, he accused ecological groups of providing a "convenient cover" for foreign spies. Russia's greens have been squawking. They hope their American friends can help them put the issue on the agenda for Bill Clinton's visit to Moscow this weekend. And the main green groups have called an emergency joint congress for June 13th. Since last year, the government has been increasingly treating environmental campaigners as a subversive menace. Some have been arrested, and then released, on drug and terrorism charges. Some groups have been subject to threatening financial audits, allegedly ordered by the federal prosecutor's office. A spokeswoman for that office has said that a number of green groups are indeed being checked for "confidential"reasons. Greenpeace's Moscow office briefly faced closure this year on flimsy-sounding bureaucratic grounds. "It looks as though they have organized an attack on the environmental movement as the avant-garde for civil society, says a worried Mr. Yablokov. Some environmentalists fear that later this year they will face new legal obstacles, especially if they receive grants from abroad. On top of all this, the new government announced ambitious plans on May 25th to build 40 new fast-breeder nuclear-power stations in Russia over the next 30 years. And it is considering another alarming project : the export of floating nuclear-power plants to Asia. Just the sort of thing for environmentalists to shout about—if the government will let them. Norway Hides Funding of Anti-environmental GroupsThe Norwegian government secretly funneled more than $90,000 to anti-environmental groups around the world this year—until a leading Oslo newspaper pried loose documentation. Oslo Dagbladet reported on 24 May: "Before the CITES meeting in Nairobi on the trade in endangered species in April, the Ministry of Fisheries and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave large sums of money to Norwegian and foreign lobby organizations in order to ensure a majority for commercial whaling. Some of the lobbyists have very dubious reputations." "IWMC, an American organization with a questionable reputation and strong economic interests, received 50,000 Norwegian kroner ($6,250) from the Ministry of Fisheries," the newspaper stated. A March 2000 letter from the ministry to IWMC head Eugene Lapointe stated that the government funds were "to carry out activities related to CITES COP 11 and IWC 52 as described in your application to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Support from other Norwegian sources will be allocated separately." The Ministry of Fisheries made a March contribution of 200,000 kroner ($25,000) to the European Bureau for Conservation and Development (EBCD), a pro-exploitation lobby group based in Brussels, "to carry out activities related to CITES COP 11 and IWC 52 as described in your application to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs." In a December 1999 letter to the Foreign Ministry (titled "Re: Norway's Contribution to EBCD"), EBCD head Despina Symons outlined a massive lobbying campaign against global conservation at not only the IWC and CITES, but also the Convention on Biological Diversity and the IUCN Conservation Congress. "We have new sponsors, both in fisheries and forestry," she revealed. A payment of 500,000 kroner ($62,500) was made in March by the Ministry of Fisheries to the High North Alliance, the Norway-based pro-whaling zealots who produce the Harpoon at IWC meetings. Significantly, the contract directs High North to transfer 100,000 kroner ($12,500) to both the EBCD and to the Africa Resources Trust, a pro-exploitation group in southern Africa. These revelations of Norwegian government funding of anti-environmental groups worldwide raise several questions:
1. For how many years has the Norwegian government been secretly financing domestic and foreign groups seeking to sabotage the IWC, CITES, CBD and other conservation treaties?
A Nasty BusinessDelegates have been rightly shocked by official whaling reports that reveal the terrible suffering still inflicted upon whales during whaling operations. Of 591 whales killed in 1999 by Norwegian whalers, 38 percent or 225 whales suffered for an average of five minutes, one animal for almost 90 minutes. The unfortunate animals were first struck by an explosive harpoon and then repeatedly shot with rifles. A new grenade was tested that reduced the average time to death to 2.5 minutes. Meanwhile, over half of the 440 minke whales killed by Japan last winter suffered for almost 5 minutes on average. The harpoon is deliberately aimed at the whale's body, to protect the head so that the ear plugs can be preserved for examination, thereby greatly prolonging the whales'suffering. In Japanese whaling, when the initial explosive harpoon does not kill the animal, another harpoon, rifle shots, or electrocution may be attempted to finish it off, a process than can take several minutes longer. This year Japan will also kill around 25,000 smaller whales, dolphins and porpoises. Dall's porpoises are stabbed as they bow-ride the hunting boats. They are left tied to floats to die as the hunters chase the rest of the herd. Often the unfortunate animals suffer electric currents passed through the harpoons—a process in which they can take an agonizing 15 minutes to die. Whales also suffer greatly during native subsistence hunts. The Russian whale hunt for 121 grey whales and one bowhead in 1999 involved average death times of one hour, with a maximum of three hours 40 minutes! The unfortunate whales were shot on average25 times but in one case 180 bullets were fired into a single "aggressive" whale to kill it. As the IWC agonizes over the completion of the Revised Management Scheme and any renewed commercial whaling, it is a timely reminder to delegates that whaling is about more than just numbers and supervision and enforcement schemes. The RMS, as it stands, excludes provisions for humane killing outside of data collection on times to death. As things stand, there can be little confidence in the existing criteria used to establish whether whales are actually unconscious, insensible to pain, let alone dead, before they are flensed. Hundreds of whales and thousands of dolphins die in the most appalling agony every year. How can rich nations like Norway and Japan justify such terrible cruelty? If they did this to their sheep and cows, they would be prosecuted under their own humane slaughter laws.
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