Please Set Whale Conservation Over Their Killing!!

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The International Whaling Commission
The Red House, 135 Station Road
Impington, Cambridge
Cambridgeshire CB24 9NP, UK

Nick J. Rahall II, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman
Committee on Natural Resources
1324 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Otto J. Wolff, Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce
U.S. Department of Commerce
1401 Constitution Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20230

Nancy Sutley, Chair, White House Council on Environmental Quality
722 Jackson Place, NW
Washington, DC 20503

Ms. Hilary Clinton, Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for
Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
1401 Constitution Avenue, NW, Room 5128
Washington, DC 20230


Dear Mr. President and Honorable Government Officials:

The United States once played a vital part in protecting whales and their oceanic habitat. As a nonpartisan voice for the International Whaling Commission (IWC), it helped shape decades of sound conservation. That's about to change if U.S. IWC Commissioner Dr. William Hogarth successfully removes a key safeguard for these giant marine mammals.

Whales are already vulnerable to pollution, global warming, sonar, drilling, fishnet entrapment, ship strikes, habitat loss and more human hazards. Yet Dr. Hogarth wants to dilute the IWC's moratorium on commercial whaling.

Granted, the commercial ban has been difficult to enforce. Japan, Iceland and Norway have long exploited an IWC exemption for "scientific whaling." There is no rationale for butchering whales to analyze migration, age, ecology or behavior. Eminent scientists and legal authorities rebuke "scientific whaling" as pointless. In fact, science-based slaughter is a veil for commerce in whale meat.

Dr. Hogarth further undercuts whale preservation with his proposal to accept some commercial whaling and allow it in coastal waters. I encourage you to appoint the Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as the U.S. IWC Commissioner and oppose strategies that endorse Special Permit catches or "Coastal Whaling." I hope you will uphold IWC regulations and discount any type whaling presently forbidden under them.

The U.S. ought to use its clout to halt whaling from Japan, Iceland and Norway -- not appease them with watered down rules. Japan, in particular, has continually defied international treaty obligations and hunted endangered whales. Moreover, whale hunts are profoundly inhumane. Harpoons
explode inside their bodies. It can take a half to full hour for a whale to
die. Some, tied to the side of ships, suffocate as they thrash in vain.

Please revitalize America's leadership in the IWC with a U.S. Commissioner
who facilitates conservation instead of killing.

Yours faithfully,