In Their Own Words: Why IWC Refuses
The HSUS observation is quite accurate. Those nations opposed to whaling in any form see foot-dragging on passage of a global whale and whaling management plan as the last remaining obstacle to the lifting of the 14-year IWC ban on whaling. Pressure from CITES and other science-based regulatory bodies urging IWC action on such a conservation effort signals all the more urgency by anti-whaling nations to close the planet's oceans to cultures that include cetaceans as part of their traditional diet by turning them into whale sanctuaries. At the crux of the debate on whale preservation or whale management is the blurring of the distinction between "industrial" and "commercial" whaling. The former involved the wanton slaughter of the earth's great whale species for their oil. That shameless part of human history was perpetuated largely by those now "developed" nations that hunted whales to the brink of extinction for their oil to lubricate their industrial machinery, illuminate their coastal light houses, and fire pre-electric urban street and home lights. Today, "commercial"
whaling refers to the desire by nations and cultures whose people see whale
resources as a source of nutrition and whose whaling history is one of
conservation, not exploitation. The "commercial" aspect comes from the
desire to trade meat or blubber taken from highly limited and regulated harvests
by nations like Norway whose people do not consume blubber to others like Japan
where blubber is eaten. Among these nations, such trade is motivated by a desire
not to waste resources, a far cry from allegations that their motivation is
identical to the reckless and destructive practices by those former industrial
whaling nations that now fashion themselves whale saviors and call themselves
"like-minded." |
|||||||||||||||||
 |
IWMC World Conservation Trust |