Green groups call for battle against whaling bloc

FRIGATE BAY, St Kitts and Nevis, June 20 (Reuters) Conservation groups on Monday called on governments to redouble their efforts to save endangered whales after pro-whaling nations led by Japan won a majority at an international whaling meeting for the first time in more than 20 years.

The pro-whaling nations at the International Whaling Commission managed to push through a statement declaring a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling unnecessary and blaming whales for depleting fish stocks.

While largely symbolic, the declaration adopted at the commission's June 16-20 meeting in the Caribbean island state of St Kitts and Nevis was a show of strength by the whaling bloc after it had spent more than two decades trying to find the muscle to challenge the ban.

Environmental activists, who were criticized in the declaration, said yesterday it should serve as a catalyst to stir US public opinion, in particular, and lead to a counteroffensive by anti-whaling nations at the next IWC meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, next year.

''For those governments that have failed to wake up and smell the coffee, this is the final wake-up call,'' said Greenpeace International spokesman Mike Townsley.

The Earth's largest creatures were driven to the edge of extinction by commercial whaling before the ban.

But Japan has continued to hunt whales and has killed thousands in the past 20 years under a loophole that allows whaling for scientific research. Iceland also conducts scientific whaling while Norway has ignored the moratorium.

NEW CAMPAIGN A coalition of animal welfare groups planned to launch an international campaign called ''Save the Whales, Again!,'' which will feature former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan, to remind people about the perils that whales and dolphins face, said Jeff Pantukhoff, founder of The Whaleman Foundation.

''People think that whales and dolphins have been saved. But nothing could be further from the truth,'' Pantukhoff said.

In addition to scientific whaling, the IWC permits some indigenous communities to hunt a limited number of whales under subsistence whaling permits, including Alaska's Eskimos.

The Eskimos' quota of 41 bowhead whales a year has helped tie Washington's hands to some extent because it needs Japanese support for the quota to be approved. The quota will be up for renewal again at the 2007 IWC meeting in Anchorage. The United States is also expected to seek a gray whale hunting quota for Washington state's Makaw tribe.

The United States was in a difficult position as ''a whaling nation that is anti-whaling,'' noted Japan's alternate commissioner Joji Morishita.

US National Marine Fisheries Service Director Bill Hogarth acknowledged that whaling was ''a very tough issue for the US'' ''Walk that line, that's what we're trying to do,'' he said.

Conservation groups say they have no intention of challenging aboriginal whaling quotas.

But they said that after the approval of the pro-whaling declaration in St Kitts, it was more important than ever that the United States stand firm against the whaling nations in the run-up to the Anchorage gathering.

''The danger is that whales will be killed again in large numbers. The US cannot cut any deals over the bowhead quota,'' said Kitty Block of the Humane Society International.

Reuters CH GC0906