Whaling to resume?

Forest and Bird, Issue 265, 1 August 1992, Page 7

Whaling to resume?

ICELAND announced it was leaving and Norway said it would unilaterally resume the commercial harvest of minke whales in 1993. These were the big news events to emerge from the meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Glasgow last month. But probably the most worrying outcome for conservationists was that the IWC, a body set up to regulate the killing of whales not to protect them, adopted a Revised Management Procedure (RMP). This included a complicated computer formula for setting catch quotas which supposedly takes into account, in decreasing order of priority: minimising the risks to depleted whale stocks, maintaining a stable quota, and maximising long-term yield. However, the official moratorium on commercial whaling

achieved in 1986 remains in place. If it were lifted the most likely populations to be hunted under the new RMP formula would be minke whales in the Antarctic, the north-east Atlantic and the north-west Pacific. New Zealand along with a minority of other members on the IWC opposes all commercial whaling. One positive proposal that got held over was a French plan for a whale sanctuary south of 40°S. This proposal will be a useful counterweight to the expected push to lift the moratorium at the next IWC meeting in Japan in April.