Greenland bid to raise whale hunt quota fails

By Simon Gardner

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Anti-whale catching nations on Thursday thwarted a bid by Greenland to raise its annual aboriginal whale hunting quota by 10 humpbacks, deeply polarizing pro and anti-whaling lobbies.

Member nations at the annual International Whaling Commission, IWC, meeting held in Santiago voted against the proposal, despite the fact that the body's scientific committee endorsed it, with some countries unconvinced that Greenland's aboriginal population needs more whale meat.

A moratorium on commercial whaling was introduced in 1986, but Japan continues to catch hundreds of whales each year citing scientific research, while Norway and Iceland continue to hunt whales in defiance of the non-binding ban.

Aboriginals in Greenland, Russia and Alaska are granted special concessions to continue catching whales for subsistence purposes, and conservationists say they are concerned by claims that some whale meat is being sold commercially in Greenland supermarkets.

"Greenland's claims that its aboriginal subsistence whaling is not commercial is an absolute sham," Wendy Elliott, a zoologist who manages the species program of global conservation organization WWF, told Reuters after the vote.

"Greenland does not need any more whales. Greenland's not even using the full quotas that it has."

Humpback whales are considered a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Global whale stock data is patchy, and much of it outdated, but the IWC estimates there are around 65,000 humpback whales in the western and northern Atlantic, Southern Hemisphere and Pacific.

Greenland already has an IWC quota to catch 212 minke whales, 19 fin whales and 2 bowhead whales each year, but says they are not enough.