Green Vegans IWC 64 Update

Tami Drake, Toni Frohoff, PhD., and Will Anderson arrived late Monday night in Panama City, Panama to represent Green Vegans at the International Whaling Convention (IWC) where the fate of thousands of whales hangs in the balance. Early Tuesday morning, we revised our position paper. It outlines our reasons for opposing all whale killing. This paper will be posted on the IWC web site later this week. The scientific committee has been in deliberations for weeks; every day there are more papers that inform our and other organizations responses. We met with other pro-whale organizations to discuss information and strategies  prior to meeting with the U.S. delegation and tribal representatives this evening for a question and often unsatisfactory answer session. Most of the discussion revolved around aboriginal subsistence whaling and why the U.S. bundled the better documented proposals in order to pass others that would fail to pass if voted on their own lack of merit.

We and our allies are doing our best to “unbundle” the whale killing proposals so that each will receive close examination as stand-alone proposals – something that is not happening now. Sadly, the U.S. government is undermining whale protection and is interested in securing the aboriginal and pseudo-aboriginal whaling quotas at all costs to other whales. The U.S. appears to be willing to forgo meaningful whale protection to accomplish this. In fact, the U.S. has become a whaling nation by supporting whaling in other countries. Tomorrow, the subcommittee on subsistence whaling starts at 9 AM for what surely will be a contentious meeting. It is here, and at similar committee meetings where we will lobby to stop whaling. Expect another report from us tomorrow.