IWC Vote Backs Aboriginal Whale Hunts -- With New Quotas

Florianopolis, Brazil, Sept 13 (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Sep, 2018 ) :The International Whaling Commission on Wednesday cast a rare strong vote in favor of whale hunting -- but strictly for small subsistence hunts undertaken by some communities, mostly in the Arctic.

The vote confirmed a long-standing commitment to so-called aboriginal subsistence whaling (ASW) for nutritional and cultural reasons -- an exception to the decades-old ban on commercial whaling.

But some NGOs feared the vote could help ease the way for a return to full-scale commercial whaling, eagerly being pushed by Japan and other pro-whaling nations at a tense IWC meeting in Brazil.

"What the consequences are for the return of commercial whaling is extremely concerning," said Aimee Leslie of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Ryan Wulff, the US commissioner to the IWC, said the deal "gives our native communities the much-needed flexibility to operate more safely in dangerous environmental conditions that vary from one year to the next.

" The issue is highly sensitive because Japan -- with the backing of Iceland, Norway and some other nations -- is using many of the same cultural arguments to call for a return to commercial whaling.

Both pro and anti-whaling nations came together in a 68-7 vote to set a catch quota of hundreds of minke, fin, humpback and bowhead whales for the next six years for communities in Alaska, Russia, Greenland and Bequia in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Crawford Patkotak, of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, said he wanted to "thank God first of all," for the vote result.

"This means a lot to our people -- we live in harsh conditions. This is a great day for us, the people of the north," Patkotak said.