Hi Jennifer,
There have been persistent rumours in the international wildlife community that some whales are going to be removed from the IUCN Red List.
Probably this rumour origins from the High North Alliance’s press release’entitled ‘Whales off the Red List’ which included comment:
“The IUCN World Conservation Union has removed several species of whales from its Red List of threatened species.
The World Conservation’s Union’s action has placed a number of whales species into the Least Concern category for “widespread and abundant species”.
The Red List contains three threatened categories: ‘Critically Endangered’, ‘Endangered’ and ‘Vulnerable’.
According to the High North Alliance, the main target for the whale hunting, the minke whale, is transferred to the ‘Least Concern’ category. Other species placed on the ‘Least Concern’ List , included beluga , narwhal, white-beaked dolphin, Atlantic white-sided dolphin and common porpoises.
Humpbacks were transferred from ‘Vulnerable’ to ‘Least Concern’.
The downlisting has been mentioned a few times in Norwegian fisheries media, and as far as I have understood, David@Tokyo, pointed out that this was mentioned in a Japanese paper as well.
However, Greenpeace pointed out that these removals of whales from the Red List has not yet been “official” and no statements on this have yet been made on the IUCN website.
I personally have no experience of the political play behind the scenes and I have no clue why no official statement has not yet been made.
What I personally believe is that this is such a sensitive and politically charged issue and no statements will be made in the near future due to pressure from NGOs and some anti whaling nations. Of course this is only speculation from my side.
Finally the whalers believe that a downlisting of whales will make whaling more internationally acceptable and making trade in whale products easier.
Jeff Thomas writing for the San Jose Mercury has commented that humpback stocks are recovering , so the marine scientists are pondering a controversial question:
“Is it time for the whales, hunted to near-extinction in the 20th century, to have less protection under the federal Endangered Species Act?”
The answer is probably “yes” , but there will be resistance , said Jay Barkow , a NOAA marine biologist.
Most of the resistance to change the protected status for the whales come from NGOs. They are afraid that people will think then it’s OK to hunt whales.
Greenpeace is even more hard on this issue:
“ Whales need stronger protection , not reduced protection.”
“ A reduction in protection by a conservation-minded country like the US is something that Japan would make great political points out of”.
However, some people say it’s good for the credibility of the Endangered Species Act as well for the IUCN , to remove/delist/downlist animals when appropriate.
Cheers,
Ann Novek
Sweden
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Of course it’s not easy for the common man to take a position on this.
For example, Greenpeace did point out recently on a website that the minkes were classified as endangered but made a correction after a comment from a reader.
On the other hand, Rune and the High North Alliance point out that the minkes are super-abundant.
A bit off topic.
457 minkes out of 1052 have been killed so far in the Norwegian hunt. Last week was an especially good week for whale hunting.
Some whalers are very angry that the coastal area is now closed to hunting, but this has to do with recommendations from the Scientific Committee.
However , whalers say it’s impossible divide the hunting grounds into zones as the whales are highly migrating.
Another article writes again about the mercury content in pilot whales in the Faroe Islands.
There have been conducted many studies on this. The mercury impacts especially the fetus’ central nervous system and impacts on its cognitive abilities.
Another story was about a stranded sperm whale that was foung painted with ” the mob”.
Nobody knows who has painted this on the whale. Some say the whalers, others say this is meant for those who has removed the whales’ teeth etc.
A bit off topic again, but back to our ” favorite” topic – GREENPEACE!
As George mentioned on a previous whaling thread, Greenpeace are suspected of to have been a receiver of bribes!
I have ” vergessen alles mein Deutch” , so I checked out a non German site about the affair.
You really get desillusined when you read this.
It started out that the super market chain Lidl ( that has a very bad rep, employing people under slave -like conditions and selling very cheap and probably very environmentally unfriendly produced food) was heavily criticized by Greenpeace .
Lidl then bought 150.000 ex . of the ” Greenpeace Magazine”. However, 80-98% remain unsold and are dumped into containers . GP makes a good profit out of this, some 100 000 Euros.
How does Greenpeace thank Lidl?
From having been ranked as the worst pesticide user , they are suddenly ranked as the best one by GP–despite not having changed routines!
” When I heard about this , I called GP and cancelled my membership” , said one person.
New independent test results will be published. If Lidl has improved, that’s alright but they really sell environmentally unfriendly produced food etc. And now they are praised by GP….
Hi Ann,
I’ve nothing to say about “endangered lists” or Greenpeace I’m afraid! Endangered lists have also become somewhat irrelevant, although we’ll wait and see if the recommendation from the IUCN’s specialist group is heeded or not.
But in recent news I did see this from WDCS:
http://www.wdcs.org/dan/publishing.nsf/allweb/5BE25DCAFB1F863B80257309004F4586
I doubt this would have happened were the IWC regulating whaling properly.
Statement from Greenpeace re the Lidl affair( I did a Babelfish) :
Greenpeace Germany estimated the effect of sale of the Greenpeace magazine with the Discounter Lidl wrongly. We critically took the fruit and vegetable offer of Lidl like many other chains under the magnifying glass and offered at the same time the Greenpeace magazine there for the purchase. We would have never thought that this combination could place our reliability in question. That was an error. We regret that we made doubts about our independence possible.
” I doubt this would have happened were the IWC regulating whaling properly.” – David
The aim of the Norwegian Parliament is to ” increase whaling within the frames of the IWC”.
As it is now , it seems like the Norwegian and the IWC scientists don’t agree on the divison of the whaling zones into small management areas.
The whalers and some ? Norwegian scientists complain about the IWC regulations and say the whales are highly migrating….
But it seems as the whalers have much power in Norway so the IWC regulations are a bit neglected.
I don’t know about Norway’s policy, but I wonder if perhaps they are also trying to give the IWC a reason to think about taking it’s responsibilities seriously.
Completely off-topic but apparently Greenpeace caught some illegal European tuna fishing operations in the act the other day and produced much photographic evidence of rule breaking.
Good on them if it’s true, but honestly I don’t know whether I can believe them or not!
Also, if indeed it is true, shame on these rich governments for failing to regulate their operators properly. It’s one thing to be negligent though, what really matters is how they behave in the aftermath. Their response had better be appropriate.