Push on for Whaling Moratorium

A moratorium on whaling in the Southern Ocean is New Zealand's ultimate goal at next year's meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Conservation Minister Steve Chadwick said yesterday.

But Chadwick said she was not overlooking the difficulties of getting Japan to agree to a temporary halt to all killings.
"I think it's a huge challenge for them. I don't think they are ready for that yet. But you've got to keep pushing that as a diplomatic solution," she said. A blanket moratorium on whale hunting was agreed at the IWC in 1986, but a loophole allows them to be hunted for scientific purposes.

Chadwick was speaking in Kaikoura yesterday while giving her Australian counterpart, Peter Garrett, a first-hand look at New Zealand's world-famous whale-watching region. New Zealand and Australia have been working closely on the whaling issue this year and hope to use such eco-tourism ventures to highlight the economic benefits of a sustainable use of whales.

Both countries sit on a 28-nation working group set up at a June meeting of the IWC in Chile.
Chadwick said there could be as many as four informal sessions of the group before the next IWC sitting, with great opportunity for progress.

She acknowledged the June meeting had raised expectations: "They are high, but I think they are also realistic.
"People did expect when we went over to Chile that there could be a walk-away, and we came back very buoyed up, actually, about the fact that we had engaged on bilaterals constructively and also that New Zealand, Australia and the South American countries were really saying the same thing."

Garrett was invited to Kaikoura after holding discussions with Chadwick in Chile. He said the New Zealand example could help convince other countries to support the moratorium.

"This is a first-class opportunity for me to see a very well developed whale-watching business which has breathed economic vitality into the community, and which is something of a model for communities in other parts of the world."