States delegation at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (1972) proposed a similar resolution, and it was adopted by a vote of 53 to 0. The following year, at Geneva, the international vote was again unanimous. This year, at Nairobi, a unanimous vote was again taken on the issue. Nevertheless, at International Whaling Commission meetings the USSR and Japan aggressively oppose the moratorium and even refuse to adhere to modest restrictions voted by three-quarters majorities in the Commission.

The plight of the great whales is desperate. But the two nations who, between them, kill approximately 90% of all whales destroyed each year, seem determined to continue till only a few poor survivors wander the seas and it is no longer profitable to send out the huge factory ships that are equipped to dispose of a vast whale carcass in thirty minutes.

In presenting the Albert Schweitzer Medal last December to Scott McVay, Dr. Lee M. Talbot, Senior Scientist of the Council on Environmental Quality, said in part, "The results of the Stockholm Conference included agreement on over 100 specific actions, on United Nations environmental institutions and a declaration of environmental principles; yet the issue which became the symbol of the Conference was the whale. There is probably no living thing today that has come to be as representative and symbolic of our environmental awareness as the whales.

"Whales have become a focal point for international conservation concern. They have represented a true tragedy of the commons. They have been all-too exemplary of the over-exploitation and abuse of the environment and its resources by shortsighted human action. In the past they represented a significant natural resource. With successful conservation, they may again in the future. More than that, they represent what is widely believed to be a high order of intelligent being. The public responds to whales because of their unique size, their social structure, their songs, and from what many believe to be their kinship to us as intelligent mammals, and their continuing plight and endangerment at the hands of a handful of greedy industries and peoples. Beyond all this, whales no longer represent a truly significant economic or food resource. If we prove unable to manage whales, it does not augur well for our ability to manage any of the other species for which there is so much greater incentive of exploitation. In other words, if we cannot find a way to manage whales successfully, it is unlikely we will be able to do so successfully with any other component of our living environment."

The United States is the world leader in seeking to save the great whales. But persuasion has failed dismally when applied to the last two nations to conduct pelagic whaling. Stronger methods must be applied if the whales are to be saved. The time is short. The technology used to track the whales down is sophisticated: it includes radar, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, fast catcher boats accompanied by the huge factory-ship, and the most despicable of killing methods, the explosive harpoon. Shot from a cannon, the grenade-tipped harpoon explodes deep in the body of the whale. Often an hour or more of agony follows.

Dr. Harry Lillie who sailed as a ship's surgeon gave the following first-hand description: "The present-day hunting harpoon is a horrible 150-pound weapon carrying an explosive head which bursts generally in the whale's intestines, and the sight of one of these creatures pouring blood and gasping along on the surface, towing a 400-ton catching vessel by a heavy harpoon rope, is pitiful. So often an hour or more of torture is inflicted before the agony ends in death. I have experienced a case of five hours and nine harpoons needed to kill one mother blue whale. If we could imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears driven into it, and then made to drag a heavy butcher's truck while blood poured over the roadway until the animal collapsed an hour or more later, we should have some idea of what a whale goes through."

The American people are demanding in stronger and stronger tones a cessation of whale killing. Attached are a sampling of editorial comment which reflects the feeling of the nation from coast to coast.

[From the Chicago Sun-Times]

RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR AGAINST WHALES

WASHINGTON.-The subject is whales, but don't go away.

I know, you've been bugged to boredom in recent years by stories about vanishing species of life on Earth. And you're sick and tired of the railings regarding every moving object from the tsetse fly to the aardwolf.

But this time, believe me, they aren't crying "aardwolf." There's a genuine threat to the world's whale population, and you don't have to be a marine biologist or a student of Herman Melville to understand the implications of any possible extinction of the whales.

Whales are a unique form of life on Earth, mammals whose physiology and minds remain a series of mysteries to science-riddles which, on unraveling, might tell us more about the origin of life than all our outer-space exploration. But the problem seems to be that the Russians and Japanese have other views on the subject. Specifically, they see in whales not the mysteries of the universe but the makings of daily food for hounds in Leningrad and pancake makeup for Tokyo geishas.

This is the only conclusion to be drawn from the whale-hunting policies being pursued, with a vengeance, by the Soviet and Japanese governments. For there is, you see, a latter-day Russo-Japanese war going on, an alliance of the whale hunters of those two countries against the world's remaining whale population. And if we can believe the experts, it's nothing less than a war of total extermination-what commercial technocrats of those countries might even call a final solution to the whale problem.

As such things go, it's a lovely war for Russo-Japanese hunters, with fat profits for themselves and a neat rate of enemy casualties. Take, for example, the finback whale of the Antarctic: depleted in recent years from 380,000 to 77,000. The rate of slaughter for other whale species, such as minke and sperm, tells much the same story.

Were the Russians and Japanese carrying on their joint war against whales out of some national urgency-that is, to serve some fundamental human need— it might be understandable, if not excusable. But that isn't the case. Whale products in the Soviet Union and Japan, as indicated, are going into items such as dog food and cosmetic additives. In brief, frivolous items of conspicuous consumption which critics of America, particularly those from the Communist sphere, like to invoke as evidence of capitalist consumer decadence.

Indeed, the Russo-Japanese whale war constitutes one of those shortsighted exercises in slaughter-for-profit which congenitally anti-American propagandists have over the years attributed to greedy capitalism. But the fact is that this country has taken the lead in efforts to bring about an international agreement to halt the indiscriminate killing of whales.

Last June, U.S. representatives at the London meeting of the International Whaling Commission succeeded in getting a majority of commercial fishing nations to agree on minimum conservation measures designed to permit whale species to replenish. Along with a majority of countries, the United States is also seeking a 10-year moratorium on all whale fishing.

All to no avail in changing the ways of the Russians and Japanese, who followed the same aggressive approach in asserting fishing rights in North American regions.

Currently, a joint congressional resolution sponsored by Sen. Warren Magnuson (D-Wash.) and others would require that the U.S. State and Commerce departments review our entire trade agreement structure with the Russians and Japanese. What the Magnuson resolution says, in effect, is that since all else has failed, some form of direct economic pressure is needed if the world's diminishing whale population is to be rescued from slaughter.

To be sure, the rescue of whales isn't the kind of big-stroke dramatics that can win anyone a Nobel Peace Prize. But the cessation of the unconscionable war to exterminate these unique creatures is nevertheless a matter our peripatetic secretary of state might consider taking up, in no uncertain terms, with his Russian and Japanse friends in those well-publicized travels along the via pacifica.

[From the Hartford Times]

WILL THE GREAT WHALES NOW BECOME EXTINCT?

(By Bill Clede)

Whales have been a concern of conservationists for years. Now the concern has become a controversy.

The National Wildlife Federation in a strongly-worded letter to President Nixon, has urged an American boycott of Japanese and Russian products in response to "these countries' short-sighted and callous whaling activities."

According to NWF Executive Vice President Thomas Kimball, Japan and the Soviet Union have been unwilling to revise their whaling practices.

"The best scientific information available points towards the extinction of at least some of the eight species of great whales," Kimball said, "unless all whaling nations are willing to revise their practices to the degree necessary to insure the survival of these huge marine animals."

The Japanese and Soviets are now the only ones engaged in major whalekilling efforts, according to Kimball. The United States phased out its last whale fleet in 1971 and has banned the importation of all whale products.

The British, Norwegians and Dutch left the major hunting grounds-the Antarctic and North Pacific-a few years ago when the supply of whales dropped so low that expeditions became unprofitable.

While Kimball admits there is a dearth of comprehensive and reliable population statistics on whales, scientific indications and declining whale harvests point to a major survival threat for most species of whales.

In the past 50 years, more than two million whales have been killed to produce lubricants, cosmetics, soap, paint, shoe polish and margarine. The Japanese and Russians eat whale meat but Kimball claims its contribution to the protein budget is small.

Over the past three whaling seasons, the kill has averaged 37,000, a decline blamed on fewer whales. The quota for the 1973-74 season, set by the International Whaling Commission, is 37,500.

Last year, the Japanese mounted four whaling expeditions and the Russians three. Each consists of a factory ship and a fleet of small, fast catcher boats.

At the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment last year, a unanimous vote called for a 10-year moratorium on whaling. This past June, the American delegation urged the moratorium at the International Whaling Commission.

"At the meeting, both Russia and Japan declared their unwillingness to abide by an earlier decision made by all 14 member nations to give the Commission a stronger Secretariat," Kimball explained. "And the Japanese voted against three principal conservation decisions and the Russians opposed two."

Only Japan opposed the Commission recommendation to limit the 1973-74 harvest of fin whales to 1,450 and phase it out by 1976, according to Kimball. The United States had urged a complete moratorium. Once estimated to number a half million, the population of fin whales is now put at some 80,000.

Both the Soviets and Japanese have said they will not limit their take of minke whales to 5,000 this year, the same as last year. Japan had agreed, then the Soviets decided to harvest the minke, beat Japan to the Antarctic hunting waters and took the first 3,200, limiting the Japanese catch to some 2,500.

Kimball says Japan is using its own scientific figures this year to justify taking up to 12,230 minke whales.

"Since Japan and Russia are acting within the legal constraints of the IWC charter," Kimball said "that body is apparently helpless to act."

[From the New York Post]

PROTEST JAPAN WHALE KILLING

A dozen members of various humane, animal protection and environmental groups picketed the offices of Japan Aid Lines at 655 Fifth Av. at noon, to protest Japan's killing of whales.

The demonstrators contend that the Japanese have ignored quotas set by the International Whaling Commission. They said the total number of whales killed by the Japanese this year would be nearly 20,000.

[From the Los Angeles Times]

SHOW GOES ON AS WHALE FRIENDS MOUNT BOYCOTTS

(By Gordon Grant)

The passage of the California gray whales down the coast this year has, in a small way, sprouted international implications in part of Orange County.

High school students in the Capistrano Unified School District have endorsed a boycott on all Japanese-made imports, from automobiles to cameras, as a protest against Japan's repeated refusals to take part in a worldwide moratorium on the slaughter of whales.

Similiar boycotts are in effect in other parts of the United States under sponsorship of the American Cetacean Society, the Animal Welfare Institute, Friends

of Animals, Project Jonah (a worldwide organization) and, locally, the Capistrano Environmental Center.

The 14 nations of the International Whaling Commission, which meets annually, considered a 10-year moratorium on killing of whales at the 1973 conference in London. Only Japan and Russia opposed the plan, and those two countries alone account for 90% of the whales taken every year.

"The fact is," said Phillip Grignon, marine biologist and assistant principal of Dana Hills High School," that whaling is a minor industry in Japan compared to its other products."

"The purpose of our boycott here and of those in San Francisco school districts and elsewhere is to make Japanese businessmen ponder on whether their other exports should suffer because of one of their smaller industries."

Capistrano school district students are distributing leaflets listing the major Japanese products under boycott, including automobiles, photographic equipment and electronic gear such as radios and television sets.

On the lighter side, the migration of the gray whale is being celebrated with the second annual Festival of the Whales at Dana Point Harbor. Held on Jan. 25 through Feb. 3, the program includes daily whale-watching trips aboard sportfishing boats, lectures, and displays by schools and marine culture groups.

[From the Courier-Journal & Times]

SAVE-A-WHALE DRIVE OPPOSES JAPAN, U.S.S.R.

(By Irston R. Barnes)

The ruthless killing of whales has long outraged thoughtful people everywhere. Five of the major species-the blue, humpback, gray, bowhead and right whales are already so reduced in numbers that commercial exploitation is no longer profitable. So the whalers have now turned to the Antarctic fin, minke, sperm and sei whales, continuing their slaughter with contemptuous disregard for world opinion. But now, thanks to the organizing efforts of the Animal Welfare Institute, you can join in a save the whale campaign by boycotting all products of Japan and Russia.

Leadership in arousing public opinion to preserve whales was taken by the Society for Animal Protective Legislation in sponsoring a congressional resolution instructing our State Department to seek to negotiate a 10-year moratorium on the killing of all species of whales. In June 1972, the United States delegation urged a 10-year moratorium at the Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment; it was approved by 53 nations with none opposing.

Japan and Russia have since made that United Nations action an exercise in futility. At the International Whaling Commission meeting in London later in June of 1972, the same moratorium was rejected by the 14-nation commission, the United States being supported only by the United Kingdom, Argentina and Mexico. The IWC has been aptly called "the whalers' club"; it has been quite incapable of protecting whales as an economic resource. But in the June 1973 meeting, the IWSC split 8-5 on the moratorium with Denmark not voting, the action failing for want of a 75 per cent majority.

The IWC June 1973 meeting, with the added support of Norway, Iceland and South Africa, then adopted new quotas designed to reduce the kill. The quota for Antarctic fin whales was set at 1,450, a cut of 25 percent, with all hunting to end in 1976. (The world whale population is estimated to have fallen 80 per cent in less than 30 years.) Area quotas were established for Antarctic sperm whales; only a portion of the quota could be taken in one region. The quota on minke whales was held at 5,000.

In September 1973, Japan announced it would disregard the IWC's action and set its own quotas in line with "Japanese interests." Russia subsequently announced that it too would not observe the IWC quotas.

In recent years, Japan and Russia have killed 85 to 90 per cent of the whales slaughtered. With highly efficient ocean fleets, Japanese and Russian whalers have pursued the great mammals to their last refuge, the Antarctic seas. With spotter aircraft, sonar-equipped pursuit raft, factory ships and tankers, the carnage has been carried on with devastating efficiency.

In justification of their "right" to exterminate these great mammals, the Japanese say that they need the meat to feed their people. The Russians make no apologies, not even the profit motive, for their rapacious greed.

The fact is that whale meat has constituted less than 1 per cent of the protein in the Japanese diet. Until stopped in early 1971 by our endangered species and marine mammals laws, the Japanese exported some 12 million pounds of whale meat to this country as pet food! The Russians have used much of their whale meat to feed minks and sables on fur farms!

The Animal Welfare Institute (P.O. Box 3650, Washington, D.C. 20007), in association with Friends of the Earth and other conservation groups, has now launched a boycott against Japanese and Russian products. For this notable initiative, I have sent my first conservation contribution of 1974 to AWI and I am going to display their bumper sticker: "Stop the Whale Killers. Boycott Japanese goods."

[From the Indianapolis Star]

EXCEPT RUSSIA, JAPAN

NATIONS WANT WHALING MORATORIUM

(By Jeffrey Hunt)

The moment may be at hand to do something effective about the continuing slaughter of the world's whale population-and if so it has arrived none too soon, for unless the relentless slaughter of the whales made possible by modern technology is brought under control these impressive creatures face certain extinction.

For some reason not altogether clear to me, American conservatives have not on the whole been notable for their interest in-and savor the irony here-conservation. There exist, to be sure, outstanding exceptions such as New York's Senator James Buckley.

But what is at stake in conservation is a principle profoundly conservative, and one that goes beyond the preservation of this species or that, however desirable in itself such preservation might be. The issue involves man's fundamental attitude toward the world around him; or in other words, it involves the sort of being he himself chooses to be. The purely exploitative attitude toward the nonhuman world has its roots in the utilitarian tradition of the 19th century-a liberal tradition. I might add. And it is no coincidence that this attitude entailed not only a gross exploitation of nature but of other human beings as well. Prior to the 19th century the dominant tradition was one of careful stewardship.

With two flagrant exceptions, the nations of the world now favor a 10-year moratorium on commercial whaling. Such a moratorium was approved 53-0 by the nations attending a Stockholm conference on the subject in 1972. It was unanimously approved in Geneva in 1973. In 1972, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives voted unanimously for the moratorium.

Japan and the Soviet Union are the large-scale whale killers at present, and both have been refusing to go along with the moratorium. Both, however, ought to be especially vulnerable to international pressure just now.

Judging by the reception Premier Kakuei Tanaka received during his recent tour through neighboring Asian countries. Japan's international reputation is none too favorable. In fact, Japan is increasingly being perceived as a modern version of Victorian Birmingham-Manchester-Leeds, an example of runaway overdevelopment pursued without regard to any other considerations. The attitude of the Japanese toward their whaling is a prime symbol of this: a willingness to slaughter the whales for short-run profit despite the certainty of long-run disaster.

The less said about the international reputation of the Soviet Union the better, and thank you very much. Mr. Solzhenitsyn. But the Soviets do desire expanded trade relations with the West, and people like Senator Buckley might well be able to put pressure on them concerning their ocean-going abatoirs.

Modern whaling is a peculiarly messy business, far different from the adventurous Moby Dick hunts of yesteryear.

"The present-day hunting harpoon," writes one eyewitness, "is a horrible 150pound weapon carrying an explosive head which generally bursts in the whale's intestines, and the sight of one of these creatures pouring blood and gasping along the surface towing a 400-ton catching vessel is pitiful. So often an hour or more of torture is inflicted before the agony ends in death. I have experienced a case of five hours and nine harpoons needed to kill one mother blue whale. If