ARGENTINA: Latin America considers creating new whale sanctuary to promote whale tourism industry

Record ID: 445566

  • Title: ARGENTINA: Latin America considers creating new whale sanctuary to promote whale tourism industry
  • Date: 9th December 2006
  • Summary: (L!1) PENINSULA VALDES, ARGENTINA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TOURISTS ON WHALE WATCHING TOUR VARIOUS OF WHALES SURFACING VARIOUS OF TOURISTS WATCHING
  • Embargoed: 24th December 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Argentina
  • Country: Argentina
  • Topics: Environment / Natural World,Travel / Tourism
  • Reuters ID: LVA5SA5WLYMDFBQDRGVMOOS3CGDC
  • Story Text: Latin America says it is ready to strengthen whale conservation together as a region, in a bid to boost whale-related tourism.
    For the first time, government representatives from across the continent met in Buenos Aires on Friday (December 1) to discuss the issue and draw up the agreement, with full support of environmentalists that inflated a giant blow-up whale in front of the meeting.
    The agreement, which is yet to be signed, follows the lead of anti-whaling nations such as Australia and New Zealand that argue whale watching is more profitable than whale hunting.
    In 1986 the International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium against commercial whaling to prevent the earth's most giant animals going into extinction.
    However Japan, Norway, Iceland and other pro-whaling nations say some whale species have recovered and can be hunted again in a sustainable way. They have fuelled an international debate on the issue that has gained steam since Japan managed to gather majority support in an IWC meet last June.
    However all of the Latin American commission members voted against Japan in the June 16-20 St. Kitts meeting - except for Nicaragua, who later admitted that it accepted economic aid from Japan in return for a "yes" vote.
    Environmentalists say this regional new push towards whale conservation is another step in the right direction.
    "The continent of Latin America is a world pioneer in the conservation of whales. It is the only continent where whales are not hunted. And Green Peace is asking the governments that they do more for their conservation and that the countries that are not members of the International Whaling Commission join and they defend the resources of the region," Greenpeace campaigner Milko Schvartzman said.
    Anti-whaling supporters say that worldwide whale watching industry is worth at least one billion dollars every year, while Japan and Norway reap only about 60 million a year from the sale of whale meat.
    "We need the governments to understand that it is more profitable to take a group of tourists out every day to look at a whale that it is to kill the whale in one day," Schvartzman said.
    The Buenos Aires summit also took into account the possibility of new whale sanctuaries in which all forms of hunting would be prohibited, and would continue to be protected even if the current IWC moratorium was overturned.
    Argentina and Brazil are already pushing for the IWC to recognise a sanctuary covering the South Atlantic, but now that proposal might extend to all of the coastal waters surrounding Latin America.
    "Whale-watching tourism has huge socio-economic importance in our region and other regions of the world. And so we defend the scope of the IWC (International Whaling Commission) to be a control that will consider the existence of areas in which whale hunting is prohibited," Brazilian IWC ambassador Mari Mesquita Pessoa said at the summit.
    Summit leaders say that the proposed regional agreement would also include a set of regulations that would control whale tourism - and prevent the activity from affecting the animals
    "I want to reaffirm that there is a possibility of a regional agreement, a Latin American agreement, on the issue of the non-lethal uses of whales and a great push towards regulations on these activities," Argentine IWC ambassador Eduardo Iglesias said.
    Despite the current ban on commercial hunting Japan and Iceland currently use loopholes in the IWC moratorium to conduct scientific research whaling, while Norway just ignores the ruling altogether.
    Latin America already has a booming whale tourism industry, that has already made great gains over the past 10 years in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela where humpback whales use the warm equatorial waters each year to mate and give birth to their young. Uruguay and Argentina also have budding whale tourism industries that capitalize on sightings of migrating whales.
    Meanwhile Mexico is the home El Vizcaino Whale Sanctuary, an important reproduction and wintering site for both the grey whale and blue whale located off the Baja California. The El Vizcaino sanctuary is not IWC-protected but has been on the United Nations World Heritage List since 1993.
    Nicaragua was the only government that did not send a representative to the Buenos Aires summit.
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