Update on the hunt/LaDuke's position

[Guest guest]

===== A message from the 'makahwhaling' discussion list =====

 

FROM WASHINGTON CITIZEN'S COASTAL ALLIANCE

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MEDIA ADVISORY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 25, 2000

 

GREEN PARTY SUPPORTS WHALE SLAUGHTER

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" Irresponsible statement " encourages further Makah killings

 

Green Party vice-presidential candidate Winona LaDuke stated today to

anti-whaling activists that " she has made it clear that she supports the

Makah's right to take whales under their treaty rights. " Winona LaDuke is

the running mate of presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

 

The statement from Paul DeMain, LaDuke's campaign manager, comes over a year

after the Seattle Green Party convened to consider the issue. They were

unable to even bring a meeting to order. Last month, the Ninth Circuit Court

of Appeals brought a halt to the hunt, finding that the federal government

had violated its own laws in its rush to approve the hunt.

 

LaDuke's statement added " she suggests that the focus of attention should be

aimed at environmental factors that might continue to limit the opportunity

for whales to re-establish themselves at previous levels, degradation of

habitat, etc., including the use of military sonar, etc., that has allegedly

caused several dozen whales to beach themselves and die in the last year

alone. "

 

Contrary to LaDuke's statement, at least 278 beached or floating dead gray

whales were reported last year, and more than 300 have been reported so far

this year. With the increased deaths came a dramatic drop in births, to 282

this year from a high of 1,520 in 1997. Scientists are not yet able to

determine why this is happening.

 

The Green Party champions ten key values, one of which states that " Green

ecology moves beyond environmentalism by understanding the common roots of

the abuse of people. Whatever we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves. "

 

The Washington Citizen's Coastal Alliance reacted strongly to LaDuke's

statement. " Apparently, the slaughter of defenseless gray whales

within the waters of a National Marine Sanctuary does not rate high enough

to be included in their definition of the " web of life, " said Dan Spomer of

the WCCA. " We are increasingly distressed at the ability of the Green Party

to even identify the facts surrounding the ongoing slaughter, let alone make

a coherent policy decision. "

 

" Previously, political candidates at least made an attempt to educate

themselves on this issue before issuing a statement, " Spomer added. " We

invite Ralph Nader to visit the Olympic Peninsula, witness a gray whale

being blown apart with an anti-tank weapon and tell us just how this fits

into his claim of being able to 'solve our problems and diminish our

injustices.' Ralph Nader has said that 'a progressive political party is

most authentic when it connects with or arises from citizen movements and

does not forget where it is coming from or the reason for its being.' "

 

" But given our experience with the Green Party and their inability to make

the hard decisions, it seems quite obvious that they will never be anything

more than a politically-correct dog and pony show. "

 

" It's truly a shame that while hundreds of gray whales die under

mysterious circumstances and their birth rate plummets dangerously, the

Green Party's answer is to continue the slaughter. "

*****

 

 

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO

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Folks, you can contact the Nader/LaDuke people by visiting their web-site at

www.nader2000.org

 

You can also reach Paul DeMain, Winona LaDuke's campaign manager, at

nficlet

 

Maybe it's time they took the time to learn the facts behind the Makah hunt?

Make it your duty of the day to contact them, and let them know what you

think of their cowardly position. Be sure and let us know if you get any

responses- e-mail us at wcca

*****

 

 

 

FROM SEA SHEPHERD INTERNATIONAL

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U.S. SUPPRESSING OPPOSITION TO MAKAH WHALE HUNT

NMFS Chief pressured, misled whaling commission delegates

July 21, 2000

 

In the wake of the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in

Australia earlier this month, it has come to light that the United States,

seeking to avoid embarrassing and legally troubling questions about the

manner in which the U.S. approved the gray whale hunt by the Makah Indian

tribe of Washington State, has exerted pressure on IWC member nations to

keep silent on the issue.

 

Concerns over the hunt have been increasing both as a point of law and as a

troubling precedent for " cultural subsistence " whaling.

 

" At a meeting of 'like-minded' IWC member nations in Vienna, Austria, last

May, Michael Tillman, Deputy Commissioner of the National Marine Fisheries

Service and head of the US delegation to the IWC, explicitly told

anti-whaling IWC nations that the U.S. would appreciate it if the matter of

the Makah hunt was not brought up again until 2002 when the gray whale quota

is up for renewal, " said Katy Penland, president of the American Cetacean

Society. " The like-minded delegates told Tillman they would agree to this in

view of past US support on various issues. "

 

" The U.S. bullying the rest of the delegations into inaction is

indefensible. The Administration has made it clear it does not want to put

an American Indian treaty up against international conservation law and

simply caved in to the threat of litigation from the Makah by giving them a

permit to hunt rather than comply with IWC regulations and our own national

environmental policies. "

 

At the Australia meeting subsequently, the Makah hunt was brought up only

once: Prior to the IWC plenary session, the Swedish delegation ventured to

ask the U.S. how the Makah could know they were targeting migratory whales

and not whales resident to a local area of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, a

violation of their hunt management agreement. The US delegation replied that

the hunt and kill took place several miles off shore and was not in areas

where resident whales are found. Neither statement is true.

 

President Clinton replaced Tillman as U.S. Commissioner to the IWC four days

after the close of the IWC meeting.

 

" We have been saying the Makah whale hunt is illegal since the day the U.S.

secured it by violating international law in October 1997, " said Captain

Paul Watson, president of Sea Shepherd International. " The behavior of the

U.S. Administration before and during the last IWC meeting was unmistakable:

They were the actions of somebody with something to hide. "

 

Sea Shepherd International

P.O. Box 2616

Friday Harbor, WA 98250

(360) 370-5500

http://www.seashepherd.org

seashepherd

*****

 

 

 

WHALES STILL DYING, BIRTHRATE DROPPING

-

 

July 17, 2000

 

ANCHORAGE - It's another bad summer for gray whales.

 

The Anchorage Daily News reports gray whales are again washing up dead all

along the North American coast -- from San Diego to Alaska's Yukon River.

 

Deaths along the whales' migratory path between Alaska and Mexico had

averaged in the dozens until last year, when 278 were reported.

 

Biologist Dave Rugh at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle says

more than 300 dead whales have been reported so far this year.

 

The Daily News says the increased deaths have been accompanied by a decline

in births -- from a 1997 high of 1,520 births to 282 this year.

 

A federal study found many possible causes for the deaths -- starvation,

chemical contaminants, natural toxins, run-ins with fishing gear, ship

strikes and changes in wind patterns.

 

Gray whales were taken off the Endangered Species List in 1994.

*****

 

 

 

ANOTHER POSSIBLE CAUSE OF GRAY WHALE DEATHS?

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ATLANTA: The death of a pilot whale in New Jersey is the first known case

involving a newly discovered whale virus related to viruses that have killed

thousands of dolphins, porpoises and seals in recent years, researchers said

on Thursday.

 

Scientists do not know the origin of the viruses nor how they spread to

marine mammals The female long-finned pilot whale became stranded on a beach

of New Jersey's Delaware Bay in September 1997 and died after being taken to

a veterinary laboratory. DNA testing of lung and brain tissues indicated the

whale was infected with a new virus. Scientists said it was similar to two

morbilliviruses which killed dolphins and porpoises since first being

identified in 1987. Morbilliviruses also cause measles in humans and

distemper in dogs.

 

Researchers from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the Walter Reed

Army Institute of Research reported their findings in Emerging Infectious

Diseases, a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention. But scientists do not know the origin of the viruses nor how

they spread to marine mammals in different parts of the world, said Dr.

Jeffrey Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Researchers

said they did not know how often the virus kills whales. The morbilliviruses

have been blamed for the deaths of up to half of the coastal bottlenose

dolphin population along the Atlantic Coast of the United States in 1987 and

1988. Thousands of harbor seals died of the virus in northwestern Europe in

1988 and an epidemic occurred among bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of

Mexico in 1993 and 1994.

(14 Jan 00)

*****