|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
Top Environmentalist Challenges Greenpeace Florida, 9 November 2001: Leading environmentalist and President of IWMC World Conservation Trust, Eugene Lapointe, today criticized Greenpeace for trivializing the future of whales with their protests after the Japanese Fisheries Agency announced progress had been made towards establishing new international regulations for commercial whale hunting. "The bottom line is that we must set up a strong and enforceable system for carefully managing the harvesting of abundant whale species, like the minke, while providing an overall framework for species protection. Only when hunting is being carefully managed through an agreed set of international rules, will we know for sure that all the great whale species have really been saved. If progress is finally being made, that is something to be supported rather than protested." In 1994, the International Whaling Commission agreed a conservative catch quota known as the Revised Management Procedure (RMP) that would allow limited commercial whaling to take place. Implementation of the RMP has stalled under a barrage of political pressure from a small number of anti-whaling countries and multinational campaign groups. Mr. Lapointe warned: "Time is running out. Without a proper management plan the shaky semblance of international order cannot survive and we could return by default to the free for all that threatened the survival of certain whale species last century." Mr. Lapointe commented after Greenpeace organized publicity stunts at Japanese embassies in several countries to protest the imminent departure of research vessels from Japan and the news that progress had been made by the International Whaling Commission over its enforcement mechanisms for the RMP. "It is completely counter-productive for
Greenpeace supporters to pose for the media in this way. People should identify
these stunts as the fundraising events that they are. They reveal that
Greenpeace is more interested in the future of its financial coffers than in the
conservation of whales. The challenge for Greenpeace is to put conservation
before profits." For more information and interviews, contact Eugene
Lapointe |
|
