Humpback whales: Licence to kill

Humpback whales - the best loved and one of the most endangered of all the giant mammals - are to be slaughtered for the first time in more than 30 years, in defiance of an international ban.

Japan is to put plans to kill the humpbacks before a meeting of the International Whaling Commission, the body that regulates world whaling, on the West Indian island of St Kitts today. The Japanese claim the whales will be used for "scientific research", a loophole that gives a licence to kill.

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Yesterday, the Australian government described the plans as an "outrage", and Britain has also protested.

But Tokyo has made it clear that it will press ahead with the slaughter - and the killing of increased numbers of other whale species - whatever the reaction.

Humpback whales - whose haunting songs and breathtaking leaps have fired the imagination of hundreds of millions of people around the world - are on the official Red List of Threatened Species.

The British government says that past hunting - which ended in the 1970s - "pushed them to the brink of extinction". By the time the whaling stopped they were reduced to 10 per cent of their natural populations.

Experts say that killing them is particularly cruel. They are much bigger than minke whales, the main species now hunted, and so the grenade-tipped harpoons used are much less likely to kill them outright.

Japan is to kill 50 a year - along with increased numbers of minke and fin whales - under the guise of "science", exploiting a loophole in the international moratorium on commercial whaling.

Japan - along with the other whaling nations, Norway and Iceland - has a long-term aim of overturning the 20-year-old moratorium. It has been busy recruiting small developing countries, often with the help of aid, to attend the St Kitts meeting and vote for a resumption of whaling. It hopes to get most of the votes, but this will not be enough to overturn the ban, which would require a three-quarters majority.

Nevertheless it can press ahead with the slaughter of the humpbacks, by classifying it as "scientific whaling", which is exempted from the ban. Since the moratorium on all commercial whaling came into effect in 1986 (the killing of humpbacks and other particularly endangered species was banned earlier), it has been killing hundreds of minke whales a year in the waters around Antarctica under this pretext, even though it has often been condemned by the commission.

Starting from last November it has doubled its quota of minke whales, and started killing highly endangered fin whales, the second biggest species. And from next year it will start slaughtering the humpbacks.

Yesterday Joji Moshita, the head of the Japanese delegation at the meeting, said that some stocks of humpbacks are increasing by 12 to 13 per cent a year. He added: "We know that the humpback has some sort of special status, even among whales, but we put priority on science rather than politics or emotions."

Environmentalists deny that the whale has recovered enough to be hunted safely, pointing out that, at best, it is at less than a fifth of its former abundance.

And an Australian minister, Ian Campbell, said: "Scientific whaling is just commercial whaling under another guise. To be hunting 50 of these endangered species is an outrage."

Leah Garcés, director of campaigns for the World Society for the Protection of Animals, added: "They will be using the same weapons that inflict a horrific death on minke whales. I cannot imagine what it will be like for humpbacks."

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