As predicted by IWMC prior to CITES COP 11, activists and operatives with ties to IFAW, to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and the Species Survival Network (financed and administered by the Humane Society of the United States) launched a carefully packaged "save the sharks" campaign.

The effort is scheduled to blitz the world-wide media with its allegations of environmental danger to sharks and rash claims of widespread "shark finning". Initial activities are aimed at the largely Singapore-based Shark Fin soup industry, enabling the anti-soup activists to lace their campaign rhetoric aimed at an ill-informed Western audience with innuendoes of anti-Asian sentiment and play on their audience's ignorance of Asian cultural practices. At about 11:55 hours on 20 July 2000, the launching of this "strictly" fundraising activity took place on NHK Television.

The campaign undertaken by WildAid on Saving the Sharks gives us a feeling of deja vu as it includes all ingredients of previous campaigns – mainly on the ivory ban in 1989-90 – whose objective was and still is to raise money. But ten years ago, who would have thought that sharks would become "cuddly", " wonderful" creatures…

We have, in the new shark campaign, all the ingredients of the perfect fundraising operation:

Out of the four directors mentioned in the WildAid web site, three are former members (Galster, Knights, Trent) of the notorious Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and, additionally, Trent is a former Deputy Executive Director, and Knights, a cofounder of EIA. This organization has been constantly deceiving the governments of CITES and other international institutions, with false information, distorted science, illegal (sometimes criminal) activities and fake evidence.

The WildAid/EIA connection succeeded in securing, as their front runner, Peter Benchley, author of Jaws. Benchley, like many others, probably suffers from the Brigitte Bardot syndrome that calls for either aging or frustrated celebrities to prolong their presence under the spotlight through conservation issues.

The campaign itself and the information provided through Press Releases calls for Mr. Benchley to state: "some sharks species have been reduced by 90%". What makes this author an instant scientist of shark’s issue? What allows him to make such a statement, while none of the renowned experts and scientists really know?

Somewhere a statement is made that one hundred million sharks are killed every year. This false data is irrelevant if the population of sharks can carry such exploitation. Every year, some fifty million muskrats (one species of fur animal) are trapped; still the Netherlands has to exterminate large quantities of surplus animals. North American hunters hunt twenty million ducks every year… and these species, which have a much smaller range than sharks, are flourishing.

One of the WildAid/EIA Directors, Knights, is quoted as saying: "and we hope to get the kids to put in a good word for the sharks, so that sharks can be around when they are older". This is another case of brainwashing and abuse of children for the sole purpose of manipulating public opinion for financial gains. The governments concerned should take steps against this type of abuse of the innocence of children.

On the WildAid web site, the term "donate" pups up constantly, demonstrating clearly the real intent of this campaign. It becomes a moral obligation for human beings to do their share to save the sharks. DONATE!

Again Asia and its traditions is the target of this Western NGO. This is normal: none of those extremists can do proper fundraising without a "human target" and Asia, because of its cultural and traditional approaches of use of wild resources for food and medicine, is the ideal target. The message is rather clear: "Asian people, by consuming shark-fin soup are killing those wonderful creatures called sharks".

In 1989, the EIA made astronomic amount of money with the slogan "Stop buying ivory, save the elephant". Ten years later, the EIA’s offspring, WildAid, hopes to do even better with sharks, by using the slogan "When the Buying Stops, the Killing can too".

But time has changed. It is important that all believers in the principle of Sustainable Use join forces to counter not only a "fundraising scam", but another occasion to spread hatred towards Asian people. Let us make sure that the press and the public are fully informed of the motives of these people, of their activities past and present, and of the negative impact they can have on peoples and species.