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August saw more than its share of articles on whales and whaling in the United States press. IWMC President Eugene Lapointe and colleagues Stephen Boynton and Jim Beers were quick to respond. In a letter to the editor printed in the August 27th Wall Street Journal, Stephen Boynton pointed out that "America hunted whales to lubricate machines" to build that nation's industrial wealth. "Today, nations and cultures that hunt whales do so to feed their people and preserve ancient traditions," wrote Boynton who pointed out that "so-called 'commercial whaling' has no relationship whatsoever with the practices of Melville or the rest of Nantucket's whaling ships." Boynton called for a "global whale management plan" and chided the International Whaling Commission that has "sat upon its official hands for two decades refusing to cross the T's and dot the I's needed for its completion. He closed with a warning about the trend to create "sanctuaries" as a "do-nothing approach" that ignores scientific management and the "tragedies of animal species that have suffered from such well-intentioned naiveté." In a response to the Washington Post's (August 22) article on Japan's "endangered whalers" who "refuse to become extinct," Boynton condemned the cultural war waged by Greenpeace and its NGO allies against whaling cultures and nations. IWMC associate Jim Beers answered an editorial by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Norman Mineta giving the highly emotional Clinton Administration party line savaging Japan's announced research of sperm and Bryde's whales. Beers described Mineta's appeal as "emotional" and "flawed" that "cannot withstand scrutiny and fact." He then described the thriving minke, sperm and Brydes's whale populations. Beers contrasted the United State's desire to restore marine species such as cod populations with that nation's refusal to acknowledge the role of marine mammals including cetaceans as a major pressure keeping seafood species numbers depressed. Finally, IWMC President Lapointe fired off letters to the New York Times and the Seattle Post Intelligencer correcting the exaggerations and misrepresentations regarding the Japanese research efforts on sperm and Bryde's whales. He pointed out the irony of the British and U.S. efforts to block the completion of a global whale management plan due to "lack of research" while at the same time condemning Japan's efforts to provide that same data. He reminded both publications that "one of the first principles of any conservation or research effort" is to avoid any "waste of resources." Another poignant comment regarding Japan and any legitimate conservation effort's aversion to resource waste, asked why the outcry over Japanese researchers selling the whale meat to finance their intellectual pursuits? Such an approach is eminently sensible in light of the constant lament by academic and research institutions across the planet over the lack of funds to support their efforts. Ť |
