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End of moratorium on whaling threatens more blood in the seas http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1275497482
The moratorium on commercial whaling, one of the world's major environmental achievements, is in danger of being abandoned after 24 years at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) which begins this week in Morocco.
A proposed new deal, which stands a realistic chance of being passed at the conference in Agadir, would allow the three countries which have continued killing the great whales in defiance of the ban - Japan, Norway and Iceland - to recommence whaling legally in return for bringing down their catches.
However, many conservationists do not believe that catches will actually fall under the proposed new agreement, and one of the world's leading whaling scientists recently described it in testimony to the US Congress as "a scam ... likely to fool many people".... Yet the chances of the deal going through are increased by a bizarre bureaucratic twist which may mean that European countries such as Britain, which are opposed, may not be able to vote against it in the final section of the meeting, which begins in three weeks' time.
"This is a great deal for the whaling countries," said Mark Simmonds, international head of science for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. "In Norway they're already celebrating. But it's potentially a tragedy for the whales."
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[Read more stories about:
hunting to extinction, marine mammals]
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Heck -- they'll all just die eventually anyway!
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