The International Whaling Commission meeting this year raised a number of issues related to whale and dolphin survival, and I hope you've read the reports by Dr. Paul Spong linked on the home page. (Paul is the scientist who originally brought the Greenpeace movement into the whaling issue, and he has been a tireless advocate for them nonstop since that time and before).

I'd like to comment on something I find particularly heartbreaking: the "trading" of favors by the USA in order to get an IWC-approved bowhead whale kill for U.S. aboriginal needs. Not only many ostensibly pro-whale nations, but even some conservation organizations have actively or tacitly supported this kill of a terribly endangered whale.

We at GPF are not unmoved by the plight of native human cultures. In a real way, the same forces which have decimated whales have endangered their traditional ways of life. I have met with aboriginal whalers and have found much to like and respect in them personally.

However, it is human arrogance to endanger the existence of a race of beings for the culture of a human population. For bowhead whales may well be capable of having a 'culture' of their own. They are the world's longest-living mammals, with brains much larger than our own, presumably containing centuries of memories. Inasmuch as cetaceans which have been tested for self-awareness have passed that test, it is likely that they are conscious, thinking beings in no way qualitatively inferior to humans.

Our actions are melting the polar ice, drastically altering their habitats and perhaps their food sources, and their populations are already decimated by previous industrial whaling. Yet the USA asked for, and received, a 5-year "block quota" of 280 bowhead whales killed. To do so, they had to trade favors with Japan, which is pushing for industrial whaling. We've seen this sort of trading going on ever since the USA first compromised itself by insisting on a kill quota for endangered whales in 1978.

We have vociferously opposed this since that time. It is an issue which has split conservation groups along interesting lines. There are those which are generally in favor of saving whales, but which think that ultimately the survival of nonhuman beings - however intelligent - is less important than the tradition of a group of humans which wishes to kill them. There are also groups based in the USA which wave the anti-whaling flag, but which make a convenient exception when it comes to the USA being allowed to kill endangered whales. I won't mention any names, they know who they are. It's unfortunate.

We will always, always, advocate for species survival first. Human rights are a wonderful thing, but we're not a human rights group.

The bowhead kill is unjustifiable.