Date: Fri, 20 Jun, 1997
CITES Rejects Japanese Proposals

Delegates at the meeting of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) Parties in Zimbabwe voted 27 - 51 by secret ballot to defeat a Japanese proposal to sever linkage between CITES and the International Whaling Commission, giving whale conservation monitoring to CITES exclusively.

On June 16, 1997, CITES delegates rejected by a 47 to 64 vote a Japanese proposal to downlist eastern Pacific Gray whales.

On June 17, 1997, CITES meeting delegates rejected additional proposals by Japan and Norway to downlist several Minke whale populations and allow international trade in certain whale products. Norway's request on Minke whales failed on a secret ballot vote of 57 - 51, not having achieved the two-thirds majority required. Delegates voted 45 - 65 by secret ballot to defeat Japanese proposal on west Pacific Minke whales and voted 53 - 59 by secret ballot to defeat a Japanese proposal on south Pacific Minke whales. Subsequently, Japan withdrew a third proposal to downlist Bryde's whales in the northwest Pacific. [Reuters, Dow Jones News, Assoc Press]


NEW YORK, July 1 (NewsWire) -- The majority of nations at the recent bi-annual meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) supported sustainable use of abundant whale stocks by casting their votes to allow trade in whale products, 57 to 51. By their ballots, they showed that they opposed the idea that whales cannot be used as a food resource, though their votes fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to remove the current trade ban.
"This indicates a significant decrease in opposition to whaling," said Ginette Hemley of the World Wildlife Fund, as reported by the Associated Press.
"The whole tone of whaling debate has changed."

In the past, the debate has been rather one-sided, with western nations such as the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, France and Germany proclaiming that all whales were too endangered -- and too special -- to allow them to be hunted, even though one species numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

In 1982, the IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling. The Scientific Committee maintained that all of the species of whales needing protection were fully protected by the RMP and that there was "very small risk" that the low levels of catch quotas allowed from the abundant stock of minke whales, would lead to any further depletion.

The moratorium, scheduled for revision in 1990, was upheld by the IWC majority, then pre-empted in large part by designating the Southern Ocean, home of the most diverse species of whales, as a commercial whaling sanctuary in 1994. The sanctuary also was adopted against the advice of a majority of the IWC's Scientific Committee.

During the first week of the CITES meeting, the whaling countries tried unsuccessfully to delink the IWC from any CITES obligation to support it, but most countries agreed that the IWC was still responsible.

In a statement to the conference, Norway accused the IWC of disregarding the recomendations of its experts which it said supported the view that there were abundant minke whales worldwide and they were not threatened with extinction.
"The IWC does not respect its own scientific committee. CITES shouldn't follow this practice and continue to disregard scientific findings," it said.

In an e-mail communication to the CITES Internet discussion group, Wil Burns of the Board of Managing Editors, Journal of Wildlife Management Law and Policy at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law admitted,
"I'm worried about the impact of the decision of parties to CITES to essentially tie its decisions about whether to permit trade in cetacean products to the decisions of the IWC. It's become increasingly clear in recent years that (IWC) nations (such as) Britain and Australia now oppose a resumption of whaling on preservationist rather than conservationist grounds... this basis for maintaining the moratorium in place probably violates both the letter and spirit of the ICRW (International Convention for the Regulation of whaling), undercutting its credibility."

By the second week of the CITES conference, it had become clear that CITES could not continue to ban trade in such species of whales as minke and gray whales without risking loss of its own credibility. The IWC Scientific Committee, on the basis of years of sightings surveys, had estimated that there were over 760,000 minkes in Antarctic waters and 112,000 in the northeast Atlantic. As for the eastern Pacific gray whale, the U.S. itself earlier had declared that the population had recovered to pre-exploitation levels.

At this CITES meeting, most of the important votes were cast using a secret ballot procedure, after many members complained that open voting procedures in the past made them vulnerable to intimidation by both environmental groups and large country grant donors. The secret ballot procedure allowed them to vote their own convictions rather than follow the dictates of the power brokers. Two years ago, at the last CITES conference, only 16 of the member nations by a show of hands voted to downlist the minke whales. This time, the ballot allowed the majority to vote for downlisting.

One sidelight to the vote: The chairman had to warn parties to cover their ballots, because observers were in the balcony using binoculars and tele-photo cameras to spy on how the delegates marked their ballots.



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