The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is known for raising funds on campaigns of bogus worth … "save the seals"…"save the whales from hunters"…and their infamous Mexican adventure, in which they were instrumental in preventing the socially and economically beneficial and environmentally benign development of a salt producing plant down in the Baja. These former campaigns raised both millions of dollars and undeserved credibility with the public and with politicians. The public relations success of those former efforts undoubtedly contributed to their new coup: The US Congress has just recently awarded IFAW a $685,000 grant to implement a project expected to prevent Atlantic Right whales from becoming entangled in lobster gear off the eastern US. The proposal was written by Congressman William Delahunt, and endorsed by Senator Ted Kennedy, the Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association, and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

The IFAW web site has also announced that more funds are needed to complete the project, which involves supplying lobstermen with a new kind of rope that sinks, rather than floats, thus eliminating the hazard to diving whales that the older kind of gear has always presented. The new rope lines between pots on the ocean floor shall now be out of the way of endangered Right whales, which are decreasing at an alarming rate because they keep getting entangled and drowned. Receipt of this federal funding is expected to encourage further funding by the public, for this worthwhile project.

IWMC World Conservation Trust applauds any efficient application of new technology that shall reduce whale entanglement. This project, taken by itself as an example of "the right thing to do" is laudable. We encourage and expect that follow-up studies of Right whale success in the western Atlantic coastal environment shall be done to determine if their mortality is indeed reduced through this effort. We hope that it shall be a successful project.

Our questions and concerns are the following: The allocation from the Congress must be as carefully audited as is any other such allotment, for proper application to the problem at hand, with a public and detailed disclosure of funds spent from the grant, by an outside auditor. This is a reasonable expectation, and perhaps such fiscal follow-up is a routine part of any such Congressional grant to a non-governmental organization. The actual biological results should be compiled over an appropriate period of time in order to determine actual effectiveness.

In our opinion, the social and cultural impacts of this grant will raise IFAW's credibility with the public. While this partnership with the Congress, the Lobstermen's Association and the State Division of Marine Fisheries may be good for Right whales now, it may set a precedent of unquestioned faith in the worth of future IFAW campaigns. The history of IFAW financial and public relations successes has been a series of efforts to impede wildlife management, obstruct sustainable use of renewable resources, and damage the ability of people to sustain and improve their economies and their lives. The IFAW anti-seal hunt campaign in the 1980s has been a disaster of tragic proportion for Inuit, Quebecois, and Newfoundlanders, and has resulted in a seal population increase that is threatening the entire Western Atlantic ecosystem. Those were among the main reasons why IFAW's application for membership in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was twice rejected.

IWMC World Conservation Trust urges all who value professional wildlife management and conservation to remember that each NGO campaign must be evaluated on both its biological and its cultural merits, and that results "in the real world" are the most significant. The long-term impacts of anti-use campaigns have been found to be harmful. Recently, research on whale-fisheries interactions has disclosed an enormous impact of growing cetacean populations on ocean ecosystems.

We are not suggesting that the present Right whale project shall have any negative ecological impact. We do insist that protest campaigns against sustainable use are violations of the public's trust, because they are built on misinformation, and do not deserve either public support or scientific community respect, as they explicitly reject the application of science in sustainable use issues. We hope that this singular IFAW "good deed" does not feed the success of future anti-use campaigns.