The
Australian Minister for the Environment and Heritage,
Senator Ian Campbell, has urged Australians to
experience the spectacle of the great whales in
their natural environment over the next few months
as they migrate up the western and eastern coastlines
of Australia.
The 2006 whale watching season
will be officially launched in Augusta, WA, this
long weekend as pods of humpback and southern
right whales arrive in Flinder's Bay to begin
their long journey north. Whales have already
been sighted migrating along the east coast.
The weekend also marks the first
anniversary of the stranding of more than 110
false killer whales off Busselton. This event
made headlines throughout the country, with an
extraordinary rescue effort mounted by up to 800
people saving all but one whale.
The images of men, women and
children crowding the beach in bitterly cold weather
trying to save the whales was used by Senator
Campbell to highlight to International Whaling
Commission delegates at last year's annual meeting
the depth of public feeling for the mammals.
Senator Campbell has just returned
from a mission to the Pacific nations of Kiribati,
the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu where he met
governments in a bid to gain support for Australia's
whale conservation stand in the lead up to the
International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting
this month.
“Around 21,000 humpbacks and
almost 2,000 southern right whales will make the
journey north along the east and west coasts of
Australia to breed in warm waters over the next
few months, giving us an opportunity to experience
this magnificent annual event,” he said.
“It is an opportunity that has
not been with us for very long. Between 1904 and
1986, before the commercial whaling moratorium,
it is estimated almost two million whales were
killed in the Southern hemisphere.
“These numbers are slowly recovering
and we are now reaping the benefits in the Indian
Ocean, with the annual show off our shores.”
Senator Campbell said while
humpback numbers in the Indian Ocean were growing,
they remained low in the Pacific.
During his recent delegation
to the Pacific, the Minister learned of a pod
of humpback whales in waters off Tonga. Australian
Naval Lieutenant Richard James also told him about
a whale he saw while scuba diving, believed to
be the first humpback sighted in Vanuatu in a
generation.
Senator Campbell said this year's
IWC vote would be crunch time for the future survival
of whales and every vote would be critical.
“With whale populations only
just starting to recover, this is not a time to
start slaughtering these creatures again,” he
said.
“I have been working day and
night through a range of international channels
to pursue a permanent global moratorium on commercial
whaling and an end to scientific whaling.
“Australia's International Whaling
Commissioner has also been travelling the world
meeting with like-minded conservation members
of the IWC to ensure a strong united voice to
save our whales.”
With the opening of the whale
watching season, Senator Campbell took the opportunity
to reassure the whale watching industry that if
he believed taking legal action would bring an
end to scientific whaling, he would have taken
it already.
This approach is also supported
by other pro-conservation countries, such as New
Zealand.
“We have been looking at the
legal theories that are available against the
Japanese for some months…and there is no legal
theory that is available that can prevent, in
our view, the Japanese from doing what they are
doing…A sovereign government cannot undertake
legal action unless it has a good chance of success.”
(New Zealand's Commissioner to the IWC and former
Labour Prime Minister, Sir Geoffrey Palmer,
The Australian, 16 January 2006)
Senator Campbell said the Australian
Government had not been reluctant to take legal
action in the past to protect and conserve species,
as it did with the southern blue fin tuna.
“The opening of the whale watching
season in WA is a reminder to us all just how
precious our whales are and how worthy this fight
is,” he said.
