Australia Fights For Whale Conservation

CANBERRA, Australia, April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- A recent New York Times article claiming that Australia supported a compromise proposal to allow whaling was "completely wrong,"  Australia's International Whaling Commissioner Donna Petrachenko said in Washington today.

Commissioner Petrachenko is attending a meeting of the 12-member International Whaling Commission (IWC) Support Group discussing the Future of the IWC.

Reiterating statements made by the Minister for Environment Protection, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett, on 25 February, Commissioner Petrachenko said that Australia could not support the current compromise arrangement, currently the focus of intense negotiations.

She said Australia's concerns were set out in her written response to the compromise proposal and were publicly available on the IWC website.

Commissioner Petrachenko said Australia was advocating a robust conservation-focused proposal that called for:

• A permanent end to whaling in the Southern Ocean within five years;
• An end to whaling in all IWC agreed whale sanctuaries;
• all whaling to be brought under the control of the Commission ending the practice of countries being able to unilaterally grant permits for so-called 'scientific' whaling.

"There is a long way to go and we continue to push very hard for our proposal," Commissioner Petrachenko said.

Commissioner Petrachenko said Australia would continue to argue for the elimination of all whaling, other than aboriginal subsistence whaling, over a reasonable period of time.

A copy of Australia's conservation proposal can be found here http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/garrett/2010/mr20100225a.html.  

The claims were made on a New York Times article U.S. Leads New Bid to Phase Out Whale Hunting published on 15 April 2010.

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SOURCE Australian Government - Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts