Groups With Money NOW Have Their Chance to Save the Whales

[Guest guest]

Groups With Money NOW Have Their Chance to Save the

Whales

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:20:44 -0700

Groups With Money NOW Have Their Chance to Save the

Whales

 

Commentary by Paul Watson

Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation

Society

 

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is not a wealthy

organization. We bring in less than one half of one

percent of the annual contributions given to

Greenpeace for example.

 

Sea Shepherd has stayed small because we have never

developed a bureaucratic structure nor have we

invested in large scale direct mail campaigns or spent

millions of dollars on advertising and promotion.

 

We have grown slowly and remained small because we are

an organization of volunteer activists who spend our

funds in the field. It has been our choice to remain

small and active and unencumbered by bureaucracy.

 

We understand that there is a need for large wealthy

organizations although the real strength of the

movement is in the diversity of organizations,

individuals, and strategies.

 

Generally, I don’t comment on organizations that I

have not been involved with and thus restrict myself

to criticisms only of Greenpeace, which I co-founded,

and the Sierra Club of which I was recently a national

director.

 

The fact is that Greenpeace spent a great deal of

money sending two ships to the Southern Oceans in 2005

and 2006 for the purpose of protesting and filming the

illegal slaughter of whales by Japan. They “bore

witness” to the slaughter but were unable to prevent

it because they were restricted by their

non-interventionist tactics and pacifist philosophy.

 

That is their choice, of course, but they now have the

money to save whales in an exceptionally non-violent

and established manner and I am urging them to

consider doing so.

 

Greenpeace condemned the Sea Shepherd Conservation

Society’s actions in Antarctica as being overly

aggressive and accused Sea Shepherd of being reckless

by directly intervening to physically interfere with

whaling, which of course is something that I

originally learned to do as an original crewmember on

the 1st and 2nd Greenpeace whale campaigns back in

1975 and 1976.

 

In fact I am also urging other groups with money who

campaign against the slaughter of the whales, groups

like the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)

and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to

do something that will make a significant difference.

 

These groups have the power and most importantly the

resources to act on this initiative.

 

They need to underwrite the membership dues of

pro-whale members of the International Whaling

Commission. In other words, they need to do with poor

pro-whale conservation nations what Japan is doing

with poor nations they recruit to support their

whaling industry.

 

The cost would be a fraction of the costs of the

recent Greenpeace ship campaign to Antarctica. A few

hundred thousand dollars could prevent the Japanese

from seizing control of the IWC.

 

In the 2005 IWC convention, of the 66 IWC member

nations, 29 voted YES to commercial whaling and 30

voted NO. Anti-whaling nations Costa Rica, Kenya, and

Peru could not vote due to delinquent subscription

payment, and four pro-whaling nations which had

received bribes from Japan – Belize, Gambia, Mali, and

Togo – were absent.

 

If all IWC member-nations show up to vote in 2006 (and

we can count on Japan to twist the arms of Belize,

Gambia, Mali, and Togo to be present to vote), it will

be 33 YES and 33 NO, which would deprive Japan of the

51+% majority.

 

But Costa Rica, Kenya, and Peru may not show up

because they cannot afford the membership dues. The

solution is for groups like Greenpeace, IFAW, or HSUS

to pay these membership dues and also to recruit other

nations to join to support the whales.

 

The whales could lose the support of the majority of

the member nations of the IWC in June 2006.

 

Greenpeace has the power to prevent this from

happening. I will be the first to applaud them if they

do.

 

[Thanks to Anthony Marr for assistance on this

posting].

 

 

P.O. Box 2616, Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (USA) Tel:

360-370-5650 Fax: 360-370-5651

2006 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

All rights reserved.

 

 

 

Permission is given to forward, distribute and publish

this information

 

 

 

Captain Paul Watson

Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation

Society (1977-

Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972)

Co-Founder - Greenpeace International (1979) of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006) - The Farley Mowat Institute - www.harpseals.org

 

Whom when I asked from what place he came,

And how he hight, himselfe he did ycleepe,

The Shepheard of the Ocean by Name,

And said he came far from

the main-sea deepe.

- Edmund Spenser

A.C.E. 1590

 

www.Seashepherd.org

Tel: 360-370-5650

Fax: 360-370-5651

 

Address: P.O. Box 2616

Friday Harbor, Wa 98250 USA