HSI campaigns to protect whales and dolphins on many fronts – at the International Whaling Commission annual meetings, through advocacy with governments and in the media, through corporate and consumer campaigns and in the courts.
HSI at the International Whaling Commission (IWC)
HSI always has a team of campaigners at the annual IWC meetings, lobbying to ensure the moratorium against commercial whaling remains firmly in place, scientific whaling is strongly opposed and proper conservation measures are taken to protect whale and dolphin populations. We are extremely concerned that efforts at the IWC to reach a diplomatic compromise with Japan and other pro-whaling nations will undo protections for whales including the global moratorium on commercial whaling and legitimise the whale hunts Japan, Norway and Iceland have conducted in defiance of the ban.
Click here for an online tool which graphs the success of the moratorium and clearly demonstrates why it must remain firmly in place.
Click here for more information about our campaigning at the IWC and see
Latest News, including updates from latest meeting.
Australia's INTERNATIONAL COURT CASE AGAINST JAPAN
HSI strongly commends the Australian Government for launching a challenge to Japan's scientific whaling program in Antarctica in the International Court of Justice. HSI lawyers set out the premise for such a case back in 1999 explaining how Japan is abusing their rights under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling with their bogus scientific whale hunts. Article VIII of the ICRW allows for lethal scientific research but Japan exploits this loophole to undertake massive commercial whaling programs in the North Pacific and Antarctic and the hunts are routinely condemned at the International Whaling Commission. It is well known that the scientific research is a flimsy excuse to get around the global moratorium on commercial whaling the IWC instituted 1986. We hope the Australia's case will bring the abuses of Article VIII to an end.
HSI's legal battle under australian law
In January 2008 HSI secured a historic decision from the Australian Federal Court declaring that Japanese whale hunts in Australia's Antarctic territorial waters are in breach of Australian law and issuing an injunction ordering them to stop. It was the first time a court has confirmed the Antarctic hunt is illegal. Unfortunately, due to politics surrounding Australia's sovereignty over its Antarctic territorial waters, the Rudd Government has not fulfilled a 2007 pre-election commitment to enforce the Federal Court injunction.
Click here for more information on our legal battle.
Convention for Migratory Species
HSI also campaigns for greater protection for dolphins and whales through the Bonn Convention for Migratory Species (CMS). We have successfully lobbied the Australian government to nominate a number of whale and dolphin species for listing under the CMS which has led to the development of regional conservation initiatives in the Pacific.
DOMEstic protection efforts
At home in Australia HSI has helped negotiate the introduction of laws which gave stronger protection for whales against all manner of threats and established the Australian Whale Sanctuary, permanently banning commercial whaling in all Australian waters. We are pushing for threatening processes such as seismic testing for oil and gas to be banned in critical habitat for whales (seasonal breeding and feeding areas and migratory pathways). We also want to see the removal of shark control nets that catch whales and dolphins and a HSI nomination was behind the Australian Government's Threat Abatement Plan to mitigate the problem of marine debris and discarded fishing nets in which whales and dolphins often become entangled. HSI has been a member of the Australian Government's National Whale Recovery Team working on Recovery Plans for the blue, humpback, southern right whales.
HSI Reports and Factsheets on Whales and Dolphins
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