Japan loses bid to resume commercial whale hunting

JAPAN and its pro-whaling allies yesterday narrowly lost a vote that conservationists feared would lead to the end of a two-decade ban on whale hunting as Tokyo said it would increase the number of animals it kills for scientific study before selling their meat.

The setback came on the opening day of the International Whaling Commission’s annual plenary session, when the coalition led by Japan lost a pair of early procedural votes considered a barometer of its clout in the group that regulates global whale hunts.

Before the vote, Japan said it would more than double its annual cull of minke whales to as many as 935 from 440 this year - in a new programme beginning in the Southern Hemisphere later this year. The decision, an extension of the scientific research whaling Japan began in 1987 - which critics say is little more than commercial whaling in disguise - was expected.

The 66-member, England-based commission banned commercial hunts in 1986, handing environmentalists a major victory in protecting species near extinction after centuries of whaling. Japan says it kills whales to study them before selling the meat, which is allowed under commission rules. Norway holds the world’s only commercial whaling season in defiance of the ban, which IWC members are free to reject.

Japan, Norway and other nations which advocate what they call “sustainable use” of sea resources, including whales, this year are expected to kill more than 1,550 of the mammals.

New Zealand, Australia and conservationist groups including Greenpeace oppose any expansion of whaling. The US criticised Japan’s decision to increase its research whale hunts, calling them scientifically unnecessary.

Japan also said it would add humpback and fin whales to its research culls, the first time those varieties would be included.