As the International Whaling Commission meeting wrapped up this week, members voted on several key measures that will impact whales for years to come. Although the proposal for the creation of a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary was defeated, there were a number of positive outcomes that strengthen the protection of whales.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the meeting schedules of many international conventions, with most in-person meetings canceled or postponed (see AWI Qu
Critical issues were on the agenda for the 61st International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting, held June 22 to 25 in Madeira, Portugal; but those that were addressed were principally the minor ones.
After the widespread unregulated commercial whaling of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, humankind finally began to recognize the importance of managing whaling and whale stocks in order to conserve, not just exploit, them. In 1931, the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations) drew up a Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (CRW), which came into force in 1935. The CRW failed to regulate the competition between the main whaling nations. In 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, the 15 leading whaling nations of the day agreed to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), which recognizes the "interest of the nations of the world in safeguarding for future generations the great natural resources represented by the whale stocks." The United States was one of the initial signatories, and acts as the depository government for the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The IWC now numbers 87 nations, many of which have never whaled and several of which are landlocked.
The 66th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) took place October 20–28, 2016, in Portorož, Slovenia, 70 years after the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) was ratified.
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was founded to regulate whaling. Today, it increasingly focuses on the value of live whales for planetary health. A new workshop report confirms the great ecological value of whales to help mitigate climate change, transport nutrients, enhance marine productivity, and promote biodiversity in marine ecosystems.
Since 2000, Dr. Naomi Rose, AWI’s marine mammal biology senior scientist, has attended meetings of the International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee as an invited participant.
The 64th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), held in Panama City, Panama, represented a challenge for the Contracting Parties: to overcome the difficulties that led to the disruption of the IWC’s 63rd meeting, and to do so without agreement on what constitutes a quorum and without a chair.
The agenda for the 67th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC67), in Florianopolis, Brazil, in early September, will provide unprecedented opportunities for high-stakes drama and high-level dealmaking.
Since the International Whaling Commission (IWC) last met in person in 2018, two significant milestones have passed: the 75th anniversary of the IWC’s founding treaty—the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW)—in
A full 17 years after being listed as endangered across its entire range, critical habitat was finally designated for the jaguar (Panthera onca) this spring. A total of 764,207 acres in the three southernmost counties in Arizona (Pima, Santa Cruz, and Cochise) and neighboring Hidalgo County in New Mexico fall within the boundaries of the final designation that was released by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) last month.
In celebration of Dr. Jane Goodall’s 90th birthday in April 2024, Drs. Marc Bekoff and Koen Margodt encouraged her friends, family, and colleagues to pen 90 tributes to the esteemed primatologist and activist. Their call was answered by a diverse cast—from “every habitable time zone in the world and every continent except for Antarctica”—including Goodall’s grandchildren, English musician and astrophysicist Sir Brian May, Animal Liberation author and Australian philosopher Peter Singer, and American actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Joaquin Phoenix.
After spending more than three decades slaughtering whales in defiance of an international moratorium on commercial whaling, Japan is proposing a package of measures at an International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting next month that would effectively lift the global ban on for-profit whaling.
Japan has adopted a new law that (1) guarantees huge state subsidies for its otherwise nonviable whaling industry, (2) seeks to raise demand for whale meat, and (3) establishes penalties against foreign protesters.
The Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) missed an opportunity this week to put an end to Japan’s massive domestic sales of meat from sei whales, which violate international regulations. Instead, the committee deferred a decision on the legality of the program until late 2018.
In November, Japan submitted its plans for a resumption of whaling in the Southern Ocean to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), despite the March 2014 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Japan’s scientific whaling there is not in compliance with the IWC’s treaty (see Spring 2014 AWI Quarterly).
In an unprecedented reprimand, the Standing Committee to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has determined that Japan’s use of thousands of tons of meat from endangered sei whales—the third
A recent issue of the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science contains the findings of a clinical veterinary and behavioral analysis of the killing methods being used in the notorious Taiji dolphin drive hunts based on bystander video footage from 2011, accessible at http://youtube/dzOw5IBmqWk (WARNING: footage is graphic).
This year, as Japan struggles to recover from the economic slump caused by COVID-19, its government is spending more than 5 billion yen ($39 million) to support a whaling industry so desperate for customers it is peddling its product as dog treats.
Having failed to persuade the International Whaling Commission (IWC) at its September 2018 meeting to overturn its longstanding ban on commercial whaling, Japan left the IWC on June 30, 2019, after nearly seven decades of membership. On July 1, Japan announced commercial whaling quotas authorizing the annual slaughter of 25 sei whales, 187 Bryde’s whales, and 171 minke whales.
