CITES would not downlist minkes

A Norwegian motion propposing the transfer of the North East and Central Atlantic minke whale stocks from Appendix 1 to Appendix 2 was rejected at the CITES conference in Florida last month. 48 countries voted against it, while 16 voted for and 52 refrained from voting. The Norwegian proposal included a clause stating that the downlisting should be coupled to the results of the ongoing debate in the International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee on the stock estimate for the North East Atlantic. The main argument of those countries rejecting the proposal was that no downlisting could come into effect until the International Whaling Commission had lifted the existing moratorium on commercial whaling. The countries voting for the proposal wanted to base the downlisting on purely scientific criteria and to the Whaling Commission’s new quota calculation model, the RMP.