tagged w/ commercial hunting
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PRNewswire-USNewswire
-- The Washington, DC and London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) today revealed that proposals to resume commercial whaling under the International Whaling Commission (IWC) will cost nearly 19 million dollars over the next decade. Estimated additional costs for the US during this time would be over $988,000 if costs were shared between member countries.
A document posted to the IWC's website outlines basic costs for setting up a Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Scheme (MCSS) in the event that the IWC agrees to allow commercial whaling by Japan, Norway and Iceland to resume.
The cost of the scheme is estimated at $1,880,000 per year, with additional start-up costs of $250,000. This does not include surveys to gather vital data for the calculation of alleged "safe" catch limits. The proposal on whether to legalize whaling will be considered by IWC members in Agadir, Morocco, June 21-25.
"It's certain that US citizens don't want their tax dollars used to subsidize the killing of whales," said EIA Campaign Biologist Samuel LaBudde, who added:
"Financing whale hunts is not consistent with American interests and reason enough to reject the proposal to legalize Japan, Norway and Iceland's commercial whaling."
At present, total income paid by IWC members amounts to about $2,234,000, which contributes to the various costs associated with the operation of the IWC and its programs. The estimated cost for monitoring commercial whaling by just 3 of the 88 IWC members would almost double membership fees.
In previous IWC discussions about additional costs, whaling nations have refused to shoulder the majority of the burden. If these costs are divided between member countries at the rate they currently pay in membership fees, the US would have to give an extra $100,000 per year beyond the $115,000 it already pays.
EIA is concerned that the cost of monitoring whaling would detract from current conservation efforts. The proposal promises that during the ten-year period
"many new, positive conservation and management benefits will be introduced."
However, it is likely that many countries will reject paying additional fees, and instead try to shift funds from existing conservation programs towards work on whaling.
Far from bringing whaling under control, the proposal throws a financial lifeline to an economically distressed and environmentally unsustainable industry, and risks diverting already scarce resources from vital conservation efforts.
"It's a sweet deal for the three countries that have sabotaged and corrupted the IWC for more than 25 years, but a disaster for everyone else" said EIA Senior Campaigner Clare Perry, who added:
"Unless nations unite to reject this proposal, the world will lose its best chance of consigning commercial whaling to the history books where it belongs."
NOTES:
(1) IWC/62/10 http://www.iwcoffice.org/_documents/commission/IWC62docs/62-10.pdf
SOURCE Environmental Investigation Agency
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/press/plan-to-legalize-commercial-whaling,1333569.htmlPRNewswire-USNewswire
-- The Washington, DC and London-based Environmental... more
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A "Live from the Ice" dispatch from Rebecca Aldworth, director of Humane Society International/Canada
There are days like yesterday in every expedition to film the baby seal slaughter. Days when horrible weather conditions keep us from reaching the ice floes but do not prevent the sealers from killing the seals.
Yesterday, the ProtectSeals team attempted to observe the seal hunt from our rigid, inflatable boat. Sadly, after hours of battling high winds and waves, we had to make the decision to turn back. We were devastated—to know this slaughter would go on without witnesses was too much to bear.
But then we received news. Our helicopter, equipped with a high-powered camera, had managed to make it through the winds to the sealing area. As we were slowly making our way back to port, our helicopter hovered in the sky above the sealing boats, filming everything. And as usual, multiple violations of the law were caught on tape. Yet again, sealers failed to check to ensure the seals were unconscious before hooking, dragging and cutting them open.
One seal was shot in the chest. As blood poured out from under him, he slowly raised his head and tried to crawl. It took an eternity for sealers to arrive and club him. Another seal—still alive—was thrown onto a pile of bloody dead seals in a sealing boat. Realizing the seal was still moving, a sealer smashed his club down onto her skull, in the midst of the dead pile.
These baby seals are subjected to unimaginable suffering every day that this slaughter goes on. They are dying in the most horrible ways, at the hands of this awful industry.
We come out here to expose that suffering to the world. The sealing industry would like the brutality of this slaughter to remain a secret, for the killing to happen out of public view. But we can’t let that happen, and your support ensures it won’t. Because of you, the tragic deaths of these defenseless animals will ultimately bring down the sealing industry. As the images of this cruelty are broadcast around the world, global markets for seal products are closing, and consumers are taking action to stop the slaughter.
Because of the images we gather of this horrible hunt, those who would defend this atrocity simply have no defense.
Please support the end of the seal hunt in Canada: donate to save seals (your gift will be tripled!), or sign the pledge to boycott seafood from Canada»
Rebecca Aldworth is executive director of Humane Society International/Canada. For the past decade, she has been a firsthand observer of Canada's commercial seal hunt, escorting more than 100 scientists, parliamentarians and journalists to the ice floes to witness the slaughter.
http://www.humanesociety.org/news/dispatch/2010/04/lfti_bear_witness.htmlA "Live from the Ice" dispatch from Rebecca Aldworth, director of Humane... more
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What harm can a simple road do in a pristine place such as Ecuador's Yasuni National Park, home to peccaries, tapirs, monkeys and myriad other wildlife species? A great deal, it turns out.
Specifically, it can turn subsistence communities into commercial hunting camps that empty rainforests of their wildlife, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society http://www.wcs.org/ and the IDEAS-Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador have found.
A study by WCS field scientists in the park found that the presence of a single road in a protected area and the subsidies provided by oil companies to local people can fundamentally change how indigenous communities use their resources by providing both access to deeper parts of the forest and a cheap means of getting meat to nearby wildlife markets.
The study appears in the most recent issue of the journal Animal Conservation.
"We've found that a road in a forest can bring huge social changes to local groups and the ways in which they utilize wildlife resources," said WCS and USFQ researcher Esteban Suárez, lead author of the study. "Communities existing inside and around the park are changing their customs to a lifestyle of commercial hunting, the first stage in a potential overexploitation of wildlife."
" A simple, seemingly inoffensive road can have far-reaching effects on a landscape and its people," said Dr. Avecita Chicchón, Director of WCS's Latin America and Caribbean Program. "It provides hunters with more access to a wider range of forest while providing a low-cost transportation route to markets. More importantly, it plugs communities more easily into the larger economic world while creating increased demand for numerous species of animals. It is the road to unsustainability."
In the study, WCS scientists measured the levels of wild meat sold in a market in Pompeya, located about 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) outside Yasuni National Park, between the years 2005-2007. The study also examined the effects of a road constructed in 1992 by oil company Maxus Ecuador Inc. that traverses more than 149 kilometers (92 miles) into the protected area.
The majority of animals brought in by hunters were pacas (mid-sized Amazonian rodents), white-lipped peccaries, collared peccaries, and woolly monkeys comprising some 80 percent of the total biomass monitored.
The wild meat market emerged shortly after the construction of the road. Although road access was strictly controlled, the oil companies operating this concession provided free travel along the road for hunters from local Waorani communities, according to the studyWhat harm can a simple road do in a pristine place such as Ecuador's Yasuni... more
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Joeys rescued after the recent bushfires are seen at the home of caregiver Annie Williams in Gisborne, Australia.
Whilst the state of Victoria does not allow commercial hunting, Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia do.
Sanctioned by the Australian government, hunters are instructed to kill any joeys by decapitation, shooting or clubbing.
The controversial practice has been brought to the forefront due to the opening up of vast parts of NSW to commercial shooters.Joeys rescued after the recent bushfires are seen at the home of caregiver Annie... more
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The fate of the ban on whale hunting to be decided behind closed doors.
The survival of whales is perhaps the most successful conservation story of the 20th century. Since a moratorium on commercial hunting, some whale species have staged dramatic recoveries. In May it was announced that the humpback whale population has climbed from 1,500 to 20,000 individuals, resulting in it being "downlisted" from vulnerable to least concern, according to the IUCN's Red List. Others, like the blue whale, appear to have stable populations but recovery remains slow.
The moratorium on hunting, begun in 1982, was the decisive moment for whale conservation. Next week, the fate of that moratorium will be decided by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). In St. Petersburg, Florida twenty-six of the eighty nations making up the IWC will gather under a media-blackout to discuss the continuance of the commercial hunting ban on whales.
"These closed-door meetings pose a grave risk to the future of the IWC and the whales it was established to protect," said Patrick R. Ramage, Global Whale Program Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). "Whales face more threats today than at any time in history and Americans from sea to shining sea want to see them protected. The last thing we need is a secret deal to re-open whaling.”
Despite the moratorium a few nations continue commercial whaling. Both Iceland and Japan partake in annual hunts, stating that their whaling is only conducted for scientific purposes. Many conservationists, however, believe that scientific whaling is just a cover for commercial whaling. Japan remains the world’s largest consumer of whale products and meat is widely available in grocery stores, restaurants, and even children’s school lunches. Norway also actively participates in commercial whaling...
Whale populations still face a variety of threats, even without commercial hunting, such as collisions with ships, pollution, by-catch, seismic testing for oil, the use of sonar, and climate change. --
--Many of the twenty-six nations attending the meeting in St. Petersburg are suspected of being aligned with Japan and Iceland in their desire to lift the ban on whaling. In an op-ed piece, Ramage states that he believes the Bush administration is preparing to allow the ban to be lifted in order to placate Japan. The IWC chairman, William Hogarth, is a Bush administration appointee.
Ramage says that Hogarth, “should either open up the process for scrutiny, or simply cancel the meetings."
The fate of the ban on whale hunting to be decided behind closed doors.
The survival... more
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