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SEA SHEPHERD INTERNATIONAL
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 21, 2000

U.S. SUPPRESSING OPPOSITION TO MAKAH WHALE HUNT
- NMFS Chief pressured, misled whaling commission delegates

In the wake of the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Australia earlier this month, it has come to light that the United States, seeking to avoid embarrassing and legally troubling questions about the manner in which the U.S. approved the gray whale hunt by the Makah Indian tribe of Washington State, has exerted pressure on IWC member nations to keep silent on the issue.  Concerns over the hunt have been increasing both as a point of law and as a troubling precedent for "cultural subsistence" whaling.

"At a meeting of 'like-minded' IWC member nations in Vienna, Austria, last May, Michael Tillman, Deputy Commissioner of the National Marine Fisheries Service and head of the US delegation to the IWC, explicitly told anti-whaling IWC nations that the U.S. would appreciate it if the matter of the Makah hunt was not brought up again until 2002 when the gray whale quota is up for renewal," said Katy Penland, president of the American Cetacean Society. "The like-minded delegates told Tillman they would agree to this inview of past US support on various issues."

"The U.S. bullying the rest of the delegations into inaction is indefensible. The Administration has made it clear it does not want to put an American Indian treaty up against international conservation law and
simply caved in to the threat of litigation from the Makah by giving them a permit to hunt rather than comply with IWC regulations and our own national environmental policies."

At the Australia meeting subsequently, the Makah hunt was brought up only once: Prior to the IWC plenary session, the Swedish delegation ventured to ask the U.S. how the Makah could know they were targeting migratory whales and not whales resident to a local area of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, a violation of their hunt management agreement. The US delegation replied that the hunt and kill took place several miles off shore and was not in areas where resident whales are found. Neither statement is true.

President Clinton replaced Tillman as U.S. Commissioner to the IWC four days after the close of the IWC meeting.

"We have been saying the Makah whale hunt is illegal since the day the U.S. secured it by violating international law in October 1997," said Captain Paul Watson, president of Sea Shepherd International. "The behavior of the U.S. Administration before and during the last IWC meeting was unmistakable: They were the actions of somebody with something to hide."


Sea Shepherd International
P.O. Box 2616
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
(360) 370-5500
http://www.seashepherd.org
seashepherd@seashepherd.org

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