Dear friend

Next week, governments from around the world will meet to discuss a damaging proposal which could lift the ban on commercial whaling. We need your help to stop it!

The ban on commercial whaling, or whaling for profit, is one of the world's greatest conservation achievements. It has stood for over twenty years and has helped protect whale species brought to the brink of extinction by whaling last century.

Now, a new proposal looks set to change all of that by granting Japan legal commercial whaling quotas in its coastal waters in return for voluntarily reducing its controversial 'scientific whaling' in Antarctica.

If adopted by the International Whaling Commission, this proposal will spell disaster for whales. It would lift the commercial whaling ban and open the floodgates for other countries to restart whaling.

WDCS is worried about the position that European Union (EU) members of the IWC may take on this proposal. The EU’s Council of Ministers has adopted a ‘common position’ that gives the member states flexibility to accept the deal. But the reality is that the European people strongly oppose commercial whaling in all its guises and we need your help to call on their governments to protect whales by voting against the deal. Please send an e-mail to the EU today.

Whaling is cruel. History has shown that it is impossible to regulate. And, in today's world it is completely unnecessary.

Please help us to persuade the EU to stand firm in their efforts to protect whales by rejecting this deal.

Thank you

Sue Fisher
WDCS Whaling Campaigner