What we do We lobby governments, persuading them to introduce laws that safeguard wild animals; we support our partners, investigating and exposing cruelty where it occurs; and we encourage authorities to bring perpetrators of crimes against animals to justice. And by raising the public’s awareness of the true horror and living cost of the wildlife trade, we try to reduce the demand for wild animals at its source.
Thanks to you: successes in 2011 Making waves for welfare • United action by 53,000 WSPA supporters in the US helped persuade President Obama to impose diplomatic sanctions against Iceland due to its defiant whale hunting activities. This sends a strong message: commercial whaling is unacceptable.
• Your generous support of our advocacy work
helped us intensively lobby two key groups within the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the body that regulates international whaling. We persuaded 25 EU member states to support proposals to improve the welfare of whales and to continue and strengthen their opposition to commercial whaling. In addition, nine Latin American countries – the Buenos Aires Group – issued a public statement in February calling on Japan to call a complete halt to its so-called ‘scientific’ whaling activities in the Southern Ocean.
• We were delighted when our expert workshop,
held with the UK government, resulted in a series of technical recommendations to safeguard whale welfare against human threats. These were presented at the 63rd meeting of the IWC in June and despite opposition from the pro-whaling nations of Norway and Japan, eight other countries, including Germany, Australia, Argentina and Mexico, gave their support and have pledged to work with the UK on this issue in 2012.
• We used strong economic arguments in our
campaign against Norwegian whaling, helping our two local partner organisations lobby the Norwegian Trade and Industry Committee. We presented Seas of Change, a specially commissioned report which revealed a dying industry dependent on government subsidies and made the case for an independent and public review of Norway’s pro-whaling policy.
• Our undercover footage exposed the horrors of
Namibia’s seal culls, in which 85,000 baby seals are killed for their fur each year. Additionally, our specially commissioned economics report showed that eco-tourism based around seal watching is worth four times the value of seal hunting to Namibia. We are now using this compelling evidence as we work with the tourism industry to help promote the case against hunting to the Namibian government.
• More than 8,000 Chilean people joined our
campaign to save thousands of sea lions from a government cull. The sea lions were being blamed for the lack of fish in Chilean waters; in fact decades of overfishing are to blame. Campaigning jointly with local partner Ecoceanos, we exerted pressure which has already paid dividends: together we persuaded fishery authorities to investigate non-lethal ways of protecting fishing stocks. We will keep up the pressure to protect the sea lions in 2012.
Marine majesty: with your help, WSPA protects whales like this breaching humpback
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