ECO: The environmental voice at the IWC

ECO is published by Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project at the meeting of the International Whaling Commission on behalf of environmental and animal welfare organizations around the globe.

For further information, please contact: Mark J. Palmer, Associate Director, Earth Island Institute, International Marine Mammal Project.

Previous volumes of ECO are available here.

Eco

Volume LXIV · Panama City, Panama · No. 1 · Monday July 2, 2012
Acrobat .pdf of issue

Greenland Again

Denmark is back again with those Greenland folks who just won’t take NO for an answer. Denmark is asking for new quotas for subsistence whaling for Greenland hunters, including ten humpback whales a year for the next five years. Not to mention two bowhead whales, 19 fin whales, and a couple of hundred minke whales.

Wait a minute! Didn’t we do this already? Well, yes, the IWC went over Greenland’s subsistence whaling in great detail in 2010 in Agadir, Morocco. At that time, a quota of 9 humpback whales and 16 fin whales (with Greenland promising to kill only 10 fin whales in reality) was adopted by consensus after a great deal of diplomatic angst.

So now Greenland and Denmark are back asking for more whales.

Environmentalists contend the whales are not needed, as a substantial portion of Greenland’s current whale meat winds up in supermarkets for sale, rather than being distributed in a more traditional manner as subsistence whaling implies.

Greenland should get no more whales for subsistence until the government cracks down on illegal sales of whale meat and provides the IWC with a valid subsistence needs report.