The story broke surface in the UK on 24 April, on the front page of The Observer.
Just how literally true it is will probably be revealed in the course of the annual
IWC meeting that began in late May in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - the venue where
such issues as the sanctuary and the resumption of commercial whaling are being
discussed and, perhaps, decided. But what the story's publication puts beyond
question is that there is a serious split in the ranks of the anti-whalers. And that
can only be damaging.
For one thing, it leaves some of the whales' best friends - subscribers to
Greenpeace, WWF and IFAW - wondering if they are giving their money to
organisations that aren't genuinely committed to the once-and-for-all abolition
of killing whales for commerce, and are, in fact, conniving with the whalers to
revoke that greatest of all green victories, the IWC's 1982 declaration of an
indefinite whaling moratorium. For another, it seems to lower to the level of
scandal a disagreement about (essentially) strategy. The EIA - which claims allies
in the RSPCA and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, among several
others - believes that the best way to save the whales is to stand firm on the
moratorium, to close its loopholes and to hang on to it until the not-too-distant
day when public opinion in the whaling countries will force their governments to
reverse their positions and to vote with the rest of the world on making the
moratorium permanent, as opposed to simply indefinite.
EIA director Allan Thornton sees great promise in, for example, the sudden
popularity of whale-watching in Japan. Japanese conservationists, he says, "see
that the end of commercial whaling took some years in different countries,
whether it was Britain or Canada or America or anywhere else. We feel we should
encourage those benign activities, so that more people have an economic interest
in keeping whales alive.
Thornton also believes that the IWC's scientific committee has more important
things to do than spend all its time discussing the feasibility, or not, of a return to
commercial whaling. There's the unhappy state of the oceans, for example - a
subject the EIA has just released a report on. "This is not the 1950's," says
Thornton. "It's the 1990's, and the world has changed. The marine environment
has degraded very significantly, and if the world wants to have whales in the next
century, then we have to take additional measures now to make sure they survive.
The IWC has to be dealing with what affects whales now, not the outdated
concerns of a couple of rich countries that want to hunt them."
Greenpeace, WWF and IFAW are for whale-watching, are against pollution and
are for a definite end to whaling, too, but they have also been anticipating the
possibility that no amount of conservationist good sense will be able to save the
moratorium from Japanese and Norwegian scientific and political poker-playing.
What they seem to be thinking, in fact, is that the best chance for the whales is for
the conservationists to sit down and play a hand.
In other words, what the EIA side (let's call it 'Side A') sees as a conspiracy,
Greenpeace et al (Side B) see as beating the whalers at their own game. And the
biggest chip in the pot is what's known as the Revised Management Procedure
(RMP), the set of rules under which resumed whaling would be conducted. To
Side A, any rules for whaling are simply anathema, something that in itself would
cause whaling to resume. To Side B, it's a chance to outfox the whalers once and
for all, by making sure that if whaling does 'resume', it can't.
Considerations:
Get the Southern Ocean sanctuary on the table, says Side B, play the cards fast,
and this, in the words of IFAW's Sidney Holt, is what could happen: "The
proposed sanctuary will protect 90 per cent of the world's remaining whales...
Whaling north of the sanctuary by factory ships has been prohibited for a half a
century and will remain so. The existing Indian Ocean sanctuary protects whales
completely in that region." These geographical restrictions would combine with a
tough RMP - with its "safeguards for enforcement and insistence on a humane
way of killing whales" - to create qualifications that "would not be met by whalers
in 50 years, and probably never."
The idea, then, is to switch the conditions for whaling from illegal but possible to
legal but impossible. It's a good scam - and refreshingly unlike most
conservationist manoeuvres, which tend to be uncomplicated and shining-knight-
like (in this instance, Side A' approach). But can Side B pull it off? You'll have to
watch your daily newspaper, today and throughout the IWC meeting, for the
answer to that - but now, of course, there's been this unanticipated hitch. When
asked about the overall effect of the EIA's public revelations of 'plots' and
'betrayals', one Side B player said, "The worst thing is that it's blown the strategy.
Now the whalers know what we're up to."
In other words, it's not easy to play poker if your friends are standing behind you
cursing you for gambling and shouting out the contents of your hand.
DAVID HELTON
(Members of any of the groups mentioned above should feel assured that the
leaders of all of them are honestly in favour of an end to whaling and are honestly
doing what they think has the best chance of bringing it about.
Editor (BBC
Wildlife) )